


Syrup and Ink

by covetsubjugation



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, M/M, Miscommunication, Multi, Pining, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-09-26 11:59:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9895529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/covetsubjugation/pseuds/covetsubjugation
Summary: Lafayette isn't the biggest fan of his job as a barista. When he meets John and Hercules, who have opened a tattoo and piercing parlour across the street, he finds his job a little easier. But how does the arrival of his newest co-worker change everything?





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> If I complained to you while writing this fic, this is dedicated to you.

Honestly? He is sick and tired of the music. Of course, he is tired of the constant smell of coffee too, and the never-ending line of people he has to serve, and the inane questions he gets asked everyday, and showing up at ungodly times in the morning, and cleaning the forever dirty shop, and the constant chatter, and the screaming babies that people keep insisting on giving birth to and bringing in, and burning his hand on the machine so often his skin is basically as tough as leather now- But yes, he is tired of the music.

Generic lyric-less songs, all upbeat and fast paced because his boss had heard somewhere that music affected the way people spend, so now he spend his life listening to wordless music that are at least 120bpm. Each and every song is ingrained into his pores and his bones and if he has to spend another minute listening to a slightly faster paced “Autumn Leaves”, he just might scream.

Or maybe he might just hate his job.

Lafayette lingers outside the door and he curses at the sky for being this bright at 7 in the morning. It ruins his plan of storming through the door and sulking about being awake before the sun was even up.

Through the glass of the door, he can see someone at the counter, lingering just out of sight. He knows the time, he can make a very educated guess who is there. He guesses wrong anyway, just for the hell of it.

“Hello, Aaron,” he greets as he pushes open the door. He pulls out an earbud, winces at the sound of the jingling bell signalling his arrival. “I’m not late.”

Aaron sets down the tray of cutlery he was washing on the counter, casts a glance at the clock hanging on the wall. The minute hand is a little past one. “Really?” he says mildly.

Lafayette ignores him, goes to stash his bag in the space beneath the counter and pulls an apron off the hook. Aaron’s bag is there too, pushed as far in as possible and to the side, such that whoever comes in after him has space to keep their bag too.

The music hasn’t started playing yet, since Aaron enjoys setting up in silence. Lafayette grants him his silence, pushes his earbuds back into his ears and starts cleaning the equipment. He’s a little rusty, hasn’t really been to work for a month. He doesn’t really need to work but he rather not waste his whole inheritance away before he is even 30.

He cleans the equipment, wipes down the counter and the tables, mouths along to the Bruno Mars he has playing. Aaron dries the cutlery, sweeps and mops the floor around him. He has almost forgotten how graceful and dainty the other man can be. He barely registers his presence, even as the man cleans up. It’s almost like a dance, Lafayette chasing to catch Aaron, Aaron who keeps dancing just out of his sight.

“Jesus,” he murmurs to himself. He must be real tired if he is trying to be poetic.

“Did you say something?” Aaron asks and Lafayette shakes his head. That is the exact moment his hair tie chooses to snap. The two of them watch in silence as the hair tie flies across the room, disappearing under a sofa. Great.

“I need coffee,” Lafayette mutters and Aaron gestures at their surroundings.

“Wow, would you look where we are?” he enthuses and Lafayette flips him the middle finger. He goes to retrieve his broken and useless hair tie and when he stands back up, Aaron is behind him, a cup of steaming coffee in his hands. It’s even made how he likes it, with two sugars and milk.

He is starting to feel a little shamefaced about the bird when Aaron takes a sip of his coffee before handing the cup over. “Wash the cup when you’re done,” he says before he continues sweeping the floor.

Fucker.

*

They have a ritual before they flip the “open/closed” sign over on the door. Even now, they can see the congregating customers outside, all peeking in through the glass doors. Each customer tries to make eye contact, as if to persuade them to open the door earlier.

“Ready?” Lafayette asks and he can see Aaron straightening up from where he was crouched behind the counter, taking a fortifying breath as he does so.

“Ready.”

The two of them clasp their hands together and squeeze their eyes shut; as one they chant, “Please don’t let any customer fuck us over too much.”

When they pry their eyes back open, the customers outside look more confused than they did before but they brighten up considerably when Aaron, who lost the “who has to open the door” coin toss, makes his way over to the locked doors.

Lafayette takes a moment for himself to pray for their sanity.

The moment the door clicks open, Aaron barely manages to step back in time before the glass door swings open with a particularly violent push from a customer. He plasters on his customer service smile as customers stream in, fighting to get to a chair before someone else claims it. One throws his bag from across the room, managing to get it to land on a chair, mere seconds before someone else can put their coat on it. Lafayette gives the man a 10/10.

Already the line in front of his counter is starting to grow. He pulls back his hair with a hair tie from the stash he keeps under the counter and turns to greet the first one.

“Hi, how can I hel-”

“Grande doubleshot on ice, breve no classic, one pump sugar free hazelnut, one pump sugar free vanilla,” the customer rattles off and Lafayette feels his eye twitch at the impoliteness.

“Of course,” he smiles and takes the money. Of course, the first customer also needs to break a fifty. Behind him, Aaron has rejoined the two-person army and is starting to get a headstart on the drink. He would never say it, but they have worked together long enough that Lafayette can tell when he smiles like that, it’s because he is plotting the murder of a customer.

And so it goes, Lafayette taking orders, Aaron making drinks, both of them switching roles or stepping in to help now and again, identical smiles on their faces as they make their way through the line.

It is a long time before the line is finally gone, all customers sated for at least five minutes. Lafayette can feel his legs shaking and he has a good mind to just die behind the counter. Tendrils of hair are starting to fall out of the hair tie, he is sweating under his dry fit shirt, and if he looks in the mirror, he is pretty sure you would be able to see wrinkles forming on his face.

On the other hand, Aaron is leaning casually against the counter, scrolling through his phone.

“James is going to be late,” he says and Lafayette groans. A nearby customer looks up in alarm.

“How late exactly?” he asks and Aaron looks over with a blank face. Lafayette reads the answer from the twist of his mouth and throws up his hands in exasperation. “Half an hour?”

“He has a headache.”

“I have a headache,” Lafayette points out. “I’m still here.”

“You were late by five minutes.”

“Five minutes is not half an hour!”

“Laf,” Aaron coaxes and he groans again.

“I know,” he grumbles. James suffered from periodic headaches, so he only worked as a part timer and rarely came in. When he was on schedule, it was usually because he had just recovered from a bout of illness and was sure he would be illness free, at least for a little while.

Aaron pats him comfortingly on the shoulder and Lafayette leans forward to lie his head on the counter. Of course, this proves to be a mistake when he realises he still hadn’t cleaned up the spilled syrup from earlier and had just laid his head in the puddle of sticky grossness.

“Fuck!” he hisses as he rips his head away from the counter. The customer who looked up earlier now glares at him as Aaron doubles over in laughter. “Real helpful, Aaron,” he hisses as he stumbles to the sink and scrubs away at his sticky forehead.

Each wash just feels like he is rubbing the syrup around on his forehead and he scowls furiously down at the grey of the sink. All he can hear over the rush of water is Aaron choking on his laughter.

“Why is Lafayette washing his forehead in the sink?” he hears and he immediately straightens. When he turns, Washington is standing in front of his office, clearly on his way in, staring at him. Water slops down his face. Lafayette simply grunts out, “I laid down in a puddle of spilled syrup.”

Washington blinks. He looks at the spilled syrup on the counter, at Aaron giggling away, at Lafayette with his dripping wet face, and simply blinks at them again.

“Clean this mess up,” he says and he gestures in their general direction. “For the record, you’re included as part of the mess.” With that, he sweeps back into his office and Lafayette bends back over the sink to wash his forehead again. Aaron cleans up the spill but not without giggling the whole time.

When Lafayette finally emerges, his whole face is soaked. Aaron takes one look and bursts into peals of laughter again.

“Hahaha, very funny,” Lafayette grumbles as he wipes his face on his sleeve. Aaron moves to the sink to rinse out the sticky cloth.

“Sorry,” the man apologises in between chuckles. “You just looked so offended.”

“You didn’t need to laugh for so long,” he complains. “I’ve got a good mind to pour the syrup over you, you burnt toast of a man-”

“Hey, sorry but can I order?” a voice interrupts and Lafayette whirls around.

On the other side of the counter, a large bulky man is waiting, fingers drumming on the counter top. His hair is covered by a large grey beanie, the bulk of him framed by a leather jacket and when he scratches his nose, Lafayette notices it’s pierced.

“Right, sorry, sorry,” he apologises as he skids to the cashier. “What can I get you?”

The man orders a venti white chocolate mocha and cold brew, gives his name as Hercules. When Lafayette directs him to the other end of the bar to the counter, he smiles as he leaves. His fingers don’t stop drumming the whole time. Lafayette’s just relieved the guy is not an asshole about making him wait.

The next time the doors open, it is James who shuffles in, posture slumped over as he gingerly moves behind the counter.

“James!” Lafayette cheers as the man crawls in. The only response he gets is a wince. The man looks pale beneath his dark skin and when he comes behind the counter, he has to lean against it to stand up.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks and James shakes his head. Stops when that seems to aggravate his pain.

He taps his forehead. “Headache,” he explains and Lafayette steps closer to prop him up behind the counter.

“Are you sure you should be here? You look like you’re about to die.”

Behind them, Lafayette can see Aaron wipe his hands after he hands Hercules’ order over and head for Washington’s office, casting worried glances back at them the whole time. Hercules himself also casts a worried glance at James as he heads out of the store. Lafayette finds himself watching him as he leaves.

“Son,” he hears and Washington has now appeared behind them. James looks as if he wishes he could sink through the floor but Lafayette can’t tell if that has to do with him being ill or Washington bearing witness to him being ill.

“I’m fine, sir,” James insists but as he struggles to straighten up, he grows ever paler. Washington frowns in concern.

Most of the show then witnesses the two of them argue about James’ health before James concedes to lying down in the sofa in Washington’s office. The two of them agree that if James feels better before the end of his shift, he can go back to work, and that James is to arrange for his roommate to come pick him up at the end of his shift. In the meantime, Lafayette and Aaron were to run the store as normal. If they were short of manpower, they could come and get Washington to help.

As Washington helps James to his office, Aaron sidles up to Lafayette and bumps their hips together. “Pity about James,” he says.

“Pity,” he agrees, before pushing Aaron in front of the cashier, just as another customer walks into the store.

“Your turn,” he says. “I’m not dealing with them anymore.”


	2. II

The next time Lafayette comes into work, the first thing he does is storm up to Washington to demand point blank that he chooses the music today.

He should find it a bit insulting that all Washington does is to blink at him like an owl, a visual not helped by his wire-framed glasses and general stoic expression. But since Washington doesn’t actually say no, Lafayette simply runs off to the counter and changes the music to his usual playlist.

Lee, of course, makes a sour expression – or rather, he makes an expression more sour than his usual one, as if someone just gave him a lemon enema – once he hears the first song.

“What is this nonsense?” he sneers and when Lafayette simply answers him with a middle finger, Lee’s expression could be used to make lemonade.

But there is nothing to do, seeing as Lee is his “partner-in-crime” until the end of his shift, when the two of them are closing up shop. There’s no point fighting with him; it just make for an uncomfortable shift. Besides, Lafayette has long since learned that the best way to work with Lee is to simply drown out any complaints with the coffee grinder. And that is what he does, until Lee sucks up the music change.

(And when he catches Lee later, dancing to his music, he simply takes a video for future blackmail.)

He has chosen one of the less intensive shifts to work this time round, coming in just after a rush period and working till closing. Closing is a major pain in the ass, but nothing that he can’t power through. He does take a moment nevertheless, to pray for customers to not come in just before closing and ordering a complicated drink.

For the rest of the shift, he and Lee work in silence, exchanging nothing more than a request for help with a particularly tricky order. When there is a lack of incoming orders, Lafayette takes the opportunity to clean up the rest of the shop, just to make it easier for him to close up.

He also attempts to hide behind the counter as far as possible, to deter any customers from ordering. This, of course, never works.

When he is the midst of a text conversation with Aaron, with Lee nowhere in sight, someone abruptly clears their throat and he startles badly, nearly dropping his phone on the floor.

“Shit,” he and the customer swear simultaneously as Lafayette scrambles to avoid letting his phone touch the ground. When he looks up, two men are standing in front of the counter, one of them burying his head in his hands, the other wincing exaggeratedly, his hands clawed in front of him as if he tried to save Lafayette’s phone too.

“Sorry about that,” Lafayette huffs as he stores his phone in his pocket. He tries not to blush at the thought of his unfortunate accident. “What can I get you?”

“A venti white chocolate mocha and a venti cold brew, please,” mumbles the man standing at the back, his voice muffled by his hands, which are still covering his face. His curly hair further obscures his face, despite his red beanie’s attempt to hold his hair back. He then nudges the other man to pay.

As Lafayette is keying in the order, all the while keeping an eye on the door for the missing Lee, who he suspects is taking yet another smoke break, he suddenly hears the first man say, “Is he okay?”

“Excuse me?” he returns. The first man blushes when he looks back up at him, gestures in the vague direction of the space behind the counter.

“When I was here? The last time? You had a guy come in, all pale? Is he okay?” With each word, the man looks as if he wants to sink beneath the floor. His friend looks like he would help push him underground, as he bites his lip to stop his laughter from escaping.

Lafayette digs through his memory, recalls the man in front of him ordering the exact same drinks when James had come in. “Oh, you mean James! Yeah, he’s fine, he’s just chronically ill.”

Lafayette then squints at the man in front of him, struggling to recall his name. “You’re… Jason?”

The second man bursts into laughter, unable to contain himself anymore. A customer startles as they reach for their cup, nearly upsetting it across their laptop. They glare at Lafayette and he reflects on the fact that he has been glared at, two shifts in a row.

“Hercules, actually,” the first man corrects.

Lafayette collects his money sheepishly. “Right,” he apologises, “sorry.” To avoid further embarrassment, he decides to make their drinks instead of chatting. When he turns on the coffee grinder, the sound is almost enough to cover him groaning softly to himself. He contemplates sticking his hand in the grinder, just to cover up his humiliation.

By the time he is done with the drinks, he is ready to execute his escape plan – which is to put the drinks on the counter without making eye contact and then diving into the trash bin for Lee to put him out later.

He hasn’t even begun step one when the second man starts talking to him.

“I’m John, by the way, John Laurens” John introduces, swiping the cold brew. He takes a sip from the cup, jerks a thumb at Hercules. Lafayette notices his hands are covered in tattoos. “Hercules and I run the tattoo parlour across the street.”

“Tattoo and piercing parlour,” Hercules amends as he retrieves his own drink. From the way John rolls his eyes, Lafayette can tell it’s an old argument. But Lafayette is more focused on trying to remember ever seeing a tattoo parlour near his workplace.

“I don’t remember ever seeing a tattoo and piercing parlour nearby,” he admits finally once he realises the two of men are staring at him.

“We opened pretty recently,” Hercules offers nicely. John is less polite.

“Do you know anything about the neighbourhood that you work in?” he questions.

Lafayette stops to consider the question, even though a part of him bristles at the bluntness. “Not really,” he concedes and John Laurens clicks his tongue in mock disappointment.

“That won’t do,” he sighs. And then he smiles. It's the kind of smile one might expect a shark to give and Lafayette privately thinks John smiles as if he knows something no one else does.

“Do you wanna come over to the parlour?” John then asks and Hercules looks almost alarmed at the suddenness of this proposal.

Lafayette blinks in confusion. Usually, he doesn’t exchange more than a greeting with a customer, and more often than not, even less than that. This is the first time he has had a full conversation with a customer, and already the customer has offered to bring him to their own workplace. The last time any customer had tried being so friendly to the baristas, Aaron had nearly died. Or at least, that’s how the man tells it. And John wasn't being friendly, either; it was more rude than anything else. And judging by Hercules' expression, the other man seemed to feel the same way.

He blinks again.

At this exact moment, Lee comes sailing back in, smelling of fresh cigarette smoke. The three of them wrinkle their nose in affront and Lafayette makes up his mind right there and then. If he has to choose between death by rude customer and death by second-hand smoke, he would choose the customer. At least his death would be interesting.

“Yeah, sure,” he says. Hercules looks even more alarmed at his willingness to accept their invitation. A group of customers is coming into the shop and Lafayette hastens to remove his apron. “Lee, I’m taking my break,” he announces and Lee’s eyes widen as he spies the incoming group.

“Can’t you at least-” Lee tries.

“Nope,” Lafayette answers as he zips out the door. John and Hercules follow at a slower pace, the former looking more entertained than the latter.

As they cross the street, Lafayette now letting John lead, considering he has zero idea where he is going, the French man strikes up a conversation with Hercules.

“Sorry about getting your name wrong,” he apologises. “I could only remember it had something to do with greek gods.”

Hercules shrugs but he looks distinctly amused. “It’s okay,” he answers. “I would have thought it would have been easier to remember considering how weird it is, but it’s okay. Also, sorry about John, he's a bit of an... acquired taste.”

Lafayette shrugs in return. “It’s kind of a weird name,” he answers instead. “I’m Lafayette.”

Hercules raises his eyebrow. “How is that any weirder than Hercules?”

He shrugs. “I’m French; you’re not a god.”

The other man moues in consideration as John leads them to the parlour. It is literally across the street and Lafayette questions his observational skills once again as he thinks on the fact he spends a lot of his time working staring out of the window.

As they step through the door, Lafayette notices the place is very well lit. The whole store is covered with various posters and knick knacks, most noticeably a huge pride flag pinned up directly by a plastic covered bed. There are several sketches framed on the wall – tattoos that one of them had probably done, Lafayette muses – some of them in colour, some little more than basic line work.

On the other side of the parlour, there are glass cases covering racks of jewellery. The light reflects off their shiny surfaces and he has to blink to clear his vision. There’s a similar bed on the other side. There’s no pride flag hanging by its side though. Unfamiliar machinery, however, is perched by each bed and he is suitably terrified of them.

When he turns back to the two men, John is perched on a stool next to the bed with a pride flag by it, sucking loudly on his straw. Hercules looks over at him with an exasperated fondness.

“I’m the tattoo artist,” the first man announces. He points at Hercules again. “He does the piercings.”

“I tattoo people too, John,” the larger man sighs and John shrugs, taking another sip of his coffee.

Lafayette walks through the parlour. One artwork draws his eye: an astronaut, framed by multiple red carnations and white violets. Underneath it all, there’s a tiny signature under the artwork, a scribbled “h.m.”

“You did this one?” he asks Hercules, who nods. “I like it, it reminds me of this album I like. The colours also look like that The Weeknd album?”

“Starboy,” injects John.

Lafayette nods in agreement. “It’s good,” he finishes.

Hercules grins. “Thank you, thank you,” he says with a joking bow. Behind him, John boos mockingly.

Lafayette takes another look around the studio. He quite likes it here, he decides, and he announces this to the two men with him. The two of them beam with pride.

“We saved up for this,” Hercules confides. “Pooled our money after college and opened this place.” John nods in agreement, takes another sip from his now drained coffee cup and grimaces in disappointment. “We were very broke after. Are very broke.”

The smaller man points to the ceiling of the parlour. “We live upstairs,” he throws in. “It was cheaper to rent the two floors together than find another place.”

“I live down the road,” Lafayette offers. “I get what you mean, rent isn’t cheap.” The memory of his bank balance creeps into his mind and he winces. He asks another question to get his mind off it. “Don’t you guys have an apprentice or something? I thought parlours usually have apprentices.”

John nods. “Yeah, parlours usually have someone but we’re kinda new so no one has come begging.”

“Asking,” Hercules corrects.

“Begging.”

Lafayette chances a glance back at the coffee shop, winces as he spies Lee’s blurry image glaring at him from across the street. “I should go,” he says and he forces himself to walk to the door. “The coworker is glaring.”

It’s probably his imagination, but the two men look a little sad at the announcement.

“We could walk you back,” the slighter man offers and Lafayette shakes his head.

“Not going to die crossing the road,” he jokes. Takes another step towards the door. “But you guys can come by for coffee anytime. Just not before closing. Please, not before closing.”

Hercules smiles. “We’ll take you up on that offer,” he grins and that is the image Lafayette carries with him back to his own workplace: Hercules smiling, John still perched on his chair, scratching at his eyebrow with a tattooed hand.

When he steps back in through the door, Washington is standing in front of the entrance to the counter, having emerged from his office.

“I was on break,” Lafayette says immediately.

“I hadn’t said anything,” Washington points out; his mouth is twitching upwards. “For future reference, you'll seem less guilty if you let someone accuse you of something first before you start defending yourself.” He then taps on his watch. "Breaks are ten minutes, by the way."

He chances a glance at his own watch, winces when he realises when he’s been gone for almost fifteen minutes. He considers throwing Lee under the bus as well, seeing the other man smirk at him from behind Washington’s back. He decides against it, for now.

Washington eyes him for a moment before standing aside. He jerks his head back at the counter. “Back to work, son,” he says amicably as he returns to his office.

Lafayette doesn’t meet Lee’s too smug eyes when he returns behind the counter; and when the other man opens his mouth, he simply turns on the coffee grinder. He watches the blurry images of Hercules and John as they close up their own shop, smiles when their indistinct forms look as if they are arguing.

It takes him a minute before he realises what’s wrong.

“Did you change my music, you fucker?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmu on tumblr js


	3. III

“Son.”

When Lafayette looks up from his daily customer eavesdropping session, what he sees is Washington beckoning him over. He straightens up, abandons Karen and Michelle’s riveting—read, boring as fuck—conversation, and heads into the office where he collapses into the seat in front of the desk.

His boss eyes him steadily over unsteady piles of paperwork. “I didn’t ask you to sit,” he points out and Lafayette shrugs. He’s been on his feet for several hours now, he thinks he can be forgiven for taking the opportunity to rest his tired soles.

When he makes no verbal reply, Washington gives up staring at him in favour of sighing in exasperation. He shuffles bits of paperwork around his table, wipes invisible crumbs from the corner of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger before interlocking his fingers in front of him.

The thought strikes Lafayette that this could be him getting fired and he flails in his seat, straightening up properly as if an improvement in posture could be the key difference in his employment status.

“Lafayette,” Washington begins slowly, watching him adjust his posture. “As I’m sure you know, I have a son.”

This was not where Lafayette thought the conversation was going.

“You have a son?”

The conversation has barely begun, but Washington already looks as if he would prefer it immensely if he wasn’t involved in it at all. With an incredulous hand, his boss gestures at the various pictures adorning the office; and for the first time in the one and a half years that he has worked here, Lafayette notices that Washington is actually accompanied by someone other than his wife in the photos.

“Well, fuck me sideways,” Lafayette mutters.

“No,” Washington replies without missing a beat. “As I was saying, I have a son. He has recently established that he may have an interest in how the coffee shop is being run and as such, he has volunteered to work shifts here.”

Lafayette raises an eyebrow. “Why so formal?” he asks. “Are you lying to me about something”

The corner of Washington’s mouth twitches. He delicately pushes a sheet of paper away from him, as if to emphasis the sensitivity of the detail he is about to share. “Strictly speaking, Alex did not volunteer. _I_ volunteered him; and I don’t think he is very happy about it. He won’t be the nicest person when you meet him.”

“When I meet him?”

“He’s coming in tomorrow, and I’d like you to train him.”

Lafayette feels the urge to claw his own eyeballs out. The last person he had trained was Lee, and after that experience, he feels as if he could use Lee’s continued existence as a strong argument for why he should be let into heaven.

He scowls. “I can’t say no, can I?”

“No,” Washington agrees amicably; he now reclines in his uncomfortable chair, cleaning his glasses with a cloth. Whatever job he had to do is complete, and he is now free to relax. If it wasn’t rude, Lafayette would suspect he would propped his legs up on the desk. “I do pay you.”

He sighs, slouches down in his own uncomfortable chair. “Why did we need to have this conversation in your office?”

Washington grins. “Because your face when you thought I was going to fire you was very funny. Now go do what I pay you to do.”

*

Alex is already waiting outside the shop when Lafayette shows up the next day. His sleep addled brain mistakes him for Aaron, even though the man in question had already texted to apologise for him running late. However, that doesn’t stop him from nearly greeting Alex as Aaron, resulting in a rather embarrassing “Hi Aaaa-lex”.

Alex raises an eyebrow at him, and Lafayette feels the urge to bury himself in the sand. He busies himself with opening the door instead and directs Alex to put his bag behind the counter.

“Okay so,” Lafayette huffs, “we have the next half hour to open, but my partner is running late. Your opening duties are basically making sure the shop is ready for business. I’ll show you how to set up the machines later, but in the meantime, you can clean the shop.”

He gestures at the broom closet and Alex obediently follows through. With the brief moment from which he is spared from Alex’s somewhat overly intense gaze, Lafayette takes the opportunity to plug in his music. For a moment, he panics at the thought of making small talk with his boss’ son in between their stretches of training. What does he even say?

It turns out he needn’t have worried, Alex is a talented conversationalist and takes over the conversation with ease. He sweeps the shop as he talks, chatting away over the music; Lafayette watches each speck of dirt submit to the broom’s onslaught.

“So how long have you been working here?” Alex begins. Lafayette opens his mouth to answer, promptly gets run over by Alex’s speeding mouth.

“I mean, I already know, Dad talked about you last night, and also when he hired you. Not that you feature prominently in our conversations, not that Dad is a creep, he just likes to talk about work. Did you know he trusts you a lot? Even though he’s only known you for a year and a half. He thought it was very funny that you didn’t know about me, but like we can’t really blame you since he doesn’t want to talk about his family at work, but he found it funny anyway. Is that weird? How you can talk about your work at home, but not vice versa? Or is it a common thing? Did he say anything about me by the way? When he was telling you about me yesterday? I bet he mentioned that he volunteered me for this job; he told you I’m not very nice, didn’t he? I can assure you I’m nicer than that-”

The door opens. Lafayette lunges for salvation.

“Aaron,” he gasps and the man in question simply steps out of reach, as if he has practice extracting himself from the grasps of desperate men.

“Lafayette,” Aaron greets, the picture of serenity despite his lateness. “Can you explain why you look as if you want to die?”

Lafayette gestures at Alex. “Trainee,” he explains. “We have a new colleague.”

When the two men turn to look at their new co-worker, Alex looks vaguely offended at Lafayette’s introduction, but he steps forward anyway, hand outreached so as to shake Aaron’s. “Aaron,” he greets, “I’m Alexander.”

Aaron glances at Lafayette, the same way one might glance at another when asked to handle a suspicious snake, but he grasps Alexander’s hand anyway. “Pleasure,” he says.

Before he can say anything else, Alex is off again, this time rattling something about his old college and Aaron’s apparent reputation. He holds Aaron’s hand the whole time. Lafayette can barely wrap his head around it. Aaron, on the other hand, looks as if the sudden influx of information is nothing he isn’t used to. In fact, he places a placating hand on Alex’s, and with a toothy smile that somehow stops the man’s bullet train of a mouth, Aaron utters very sound advice. “Talk less, please.”

Lafayette is duly terrified.

“Lafayette,” Aaron says primly. “Why don’t you show Alexander how to work the machines? I’ll just clean up the shop.”

With a nod, and newfound respect for his co-worker, Lafayette turns to guide Alex to the machines that help them to do their jobs. To his surprise, Alex does actually work well in the shop. When the doors open—of course, not before the usual morning ritual—he manages to pick up the orders quite quickly, and under Lafayette’s guidance and Aaron’s newly terrifying aura, he learns the ins and outs of every machine, even manages to coax one of the particularly stubborn cupboards to open as smoothly as the day it was built.

He doesn’t really stop talking though, just a constant stream of chatter. Starting with the very first customer, he goes off on a rant about fair trade coffee beans; he doesn’t even stop to change subjects between each customer, but instead just keeps going. Both Lafayette and Aaron have lost track of the conversation, of the endless jumps in topics. They are not alone; each customer walks away more confused than the one before.

Alex only tries to pretend he hadn’t spent his whole shift chatting away when Washington walks in.

“Son,” Washington greets.

“Hi Dad,” Alex returns, unfortunately at the same time that both Lafayette and Aaron respond, “Work Dad.”

Washington, smart man that he is, chooses to pretend nothing had happened. Instead, he asks Alex, “Have you been talking your whole shift?”

“Yes,” Alex replies with no shame. Lafayette marvels at his behaviour and candidacy, he supposes being related to your employer has its perks.

Their boss simply shakes his head, and turns to look at his two non-related employees. “Has he been annoying you?”

As neither of them are related to Washington, and are at risk of being fired if they say the wrong thing, both Aaron and Lafayette choose to stay silent.

Or rather, Lafayette chooses to stay silent. Aaron chooses to walk to the other side of the counter where he can feign ignorance.

Washington sighs, stretches out his arm so he can flick Alexander on the forehead. Lafayette watches the younger man stagger dramatically, ponytail swinging back and forth as if his hair alone could personify his indignation.

“Dad!” Alex gasps.

“Son,” Washington returns before he slips into his office, ready to start his day of ignoring all the nonsense that occurs outside his shop. Lafayette wishes he was that lucky.

When he turns, Lafayette spots John reclining against the counter, peering around the stacks of clear plastic cups, clearly looking for someone. Lafayette takes a wild stab, and guesses he is that someone. Aaron, who is evidently ready to take his order, looks distinctly annoyed.

“John,” Lafayette greets, sidling up to the register. Aaron leaves, probably in search of less irritating company. He will not succeed, but Lafayette empathises.

John does not take the opportunity to order, instead he further cranes his head, looking directly at Alex. “Who’s the new kid?” he asks. Lafayette, who understands what the look being directed at him by the customer in line behind John actually means, offers a trade, “I will tell you his name if you tell me your order.”

“Right,” John says, once he realises he is in a coffee shop. His order is the same as the last time, a venti cold brew and a venti white chocolate mocha, and Lafayette suspects that the two of them will never order anything different.

When he turns back, John is still standing in front of the counter, ignoring the customer peering impatiently around his shoulder. Lafayette raises an eyebrow in a silent question, jerks his head at the opposite end of the counter, indicating where John should be. Behind him, Alex is frowning in concentration as he makes the two drinks.

John doesn’t move. “Do you wanna come over?” he asks bluntly. The customer behind clicks their tongue in rebuke.

Lafayette gestures for him to move. He finally does, but only enough for the customer behind him to place their order. Despite further prompts, John refuses to budge any further and in retaliation, Lafayette doesn’t answer, and keeps his new friend waiting as he finishes up with the customer and the pair behind them.

“Maybe,” Lafayette answers finally. Alex had been nice enough to leave the counter to give John his order; the ice cold mocha casually attempts to give the latter man frostbite, the other is busy being sucked through a straw, giving him brain freeze.

It’s John’s turn to look distinctly annoyed. “Dude,” he says. “Straight answer, please.”

Lafayette barely stops himself from making an obvious pun. “Why are you here inviting me over?” he asks instead.

“’Cause we miss you,” John gripes. His face is still set in a scowl, but Lafayette notes the way his mouth starts to curl up at the corners.

He shakes his head in return. “Nah.”

John attempts to change tactics, bats his eyelashes at Lafayette. “Please?” he murmurs.

Lafayette shakes his head yet again. In the faint reflection of the register, he sees Alex’s morphed image; the man looks quite won over. “What an unappealing proposal,” he sighs. “I barely know you, I expect a better reason.”

John pouts, sucks very loudly and very rudely on his straw. Lafayette winces at the sound, and just under the abrasive noise, he just barely makes out the beep of his watch. Just as promptly, Lee pushes open the main door, ever-permanent glower etched on his face. He steps back, unties his apron from his back as he goes to hang it in the backroom. Aaron, too, has rematerialized, untying his apron so he can make his own escape.

“Look,” Lafayette answers finally, taking pity on John, “if you can somehow convince me to go to your parlour in the time it takes for me to hang up my apron, I will go.”

John’s eyes flick back and forth. Lafayette heads for the backroom. Aaron’s stoic face gives away nothing, Alex just looks vaguely dazed. Finally, John’s eyes land on Lee and he leans forward triumphantly, just as Lafayette re-emerges.

“I can make his life hell,” John offers, whispering to avoid catching his victim’s attention.

Lafayette eyes him as he bends to pick up his bag from beneath the counter. Lee approaches the counter, pulling his earbuds out from his ears, scowl growing at the sight of Lafayette. Alex has taken to staring at Lee, an impish smile growing on his face. Aaron, on the other hand, is long gone.

“You got yourself a deal,” Lafayette decides. He steps out from the counter, blatantly ignoring Lee. “Do what you need to do, and then I need to talk to my boss.”

John grins, hands over Hercules’ drink for Lafayette to hold. He turns to Lee, grinning as he watches the employee struggle to put his apron on.

“Can I help you?” Lee drawls, side-eying Lafayette the whole time.

“Yeah,” John returns, in a mocking impression of Lee’s drawl, “can I get a caramel macchiato, venti, skim, extra shot, extra-hot, extra-whip, sugar-free.”

Lafayette winces. If he had received that order personally, he would have dumped the nearest trash bin’s contents over the customer. A customer with that kind of order screams high-maintenance and an outstanding assassination.

To Lee’s credit, the only outward sign of his distress is his sudden twitching eye.

“Certainly.” The word is ejected unwillingly out into the world through gritted teeth. If Lafayette wanted to look even closer, he would have sworn he was able to see the way Lee’s hand is clawed as he rips a venti cup from the stack next to him.

“Let me just talk to Washington,” Lafayette bites out, struggling not to smile too obviously. Judging by the look Lee directs at him, he is not doing a good job.

He stumbles to his boss’ office, only manages to open the door before he breaks into peals of laughter. Washington just sighs tiredly in response.

In between giggles, Lafayette does actually manage to brief him on the progress of Alex’s training. He also lets his boss know about Alex’s incessant talking. Washington only mildly looks as if his soul has decided to vacate the premises, so Lafayette decides that he has done his job adequately and decides to leave.

When he goes to find John, he finds the man outside the building, tentatively sipping at the drink and pulling faces.

“Yeah, that is a shitty drink,” Lafayette agrees at the multitude of horrified faces that John is pulling at his drink. “Shall we go?”

John nods, crosses the road without bothering to check for oncoming traffic. He is still holding on to the terrible drink. Lafayette decides that he must somehow be psychic, to have that kind of trust in unknown drivers’ abilities to stop in time without smearing him across the road. Nevertheless, he himself is not psychic, and so, he tugs on John’s arm, pulling him across the road hurriedly. John doesn’t even look remotedly concerned. “Do you think Hercules will drink this?” he asks.

Hercules’ cheer when they open the door to the parlour seems like answer enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was so difficult to write im crying how do i author


	4. IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> every chapter is just me screaming louder and louder and banging an increasing number of pots and pans together

“You’re joking,” he hears James say when he steps through the door.

Aaron groans, leaning back to distance himself from his own misery. “I’m completely serious,” he complains. “She asked for the ice cubes to stay at the bottom of the cup, then asked for Washington when I couldn’t defy physics.”

James snorts. “Customers,” he sighs. Lafayette silently agrees. Customers, indeed. As he rounds the counter, he smiles at Aaron over James’ shoulder, who looks almost surprised.

“Is it time already?” he questions, wrestling his phone out of his pocket to check the time. He squints through his glasses, hums when he realises he has been freed from the shackles of customer service.

“Goodbye, Valjean,” Lafayette says. He passes Aaron’s bag to him, chucks his own bag into the recently vacated space. James looks confused at the reference.

“What am I missing?” he asks. Aaron pats him on the head as if he is a confused puppy.

“Have you watched Les Mis?” Lafayette replies absently. He checks his jeans’ pockets, checks them again. His hair tie has disappeared yet again, to his frustration.

“Never.”

“I’ll show it to you sometime,” Aaron says amicably. He nudges Lafayette’s shoulder; he is holding a hair tie. The man keeps them around specifically for this reason, he said once.

Aaron is a saint, Lafayette thinks, and thanks him profusely.

“Yeah, that would be nice,” James says, beaming back. Compared to last time, he looks much healthier and the two of them wave at Aaron as he leaves. Lafayette watches him go, half wishes he could join Aaron in escaping hell.

“How are the customers today?” he asks his remaining co-worker. He gets a snort in reply. Same old then.

And it is. Customers come and go, some with more complicated orders than others, some who are more irritating than others. Lafayette wipes down tables, tosses away stray cups, ignores the customer in the corner who is definitely watching porn on the free wifi.

He gets to talk to James, which is always nice, seeing as his colleague tends to be out ill more than not. He learns that James, in his free time, has picked up knitting. His roommate/best friend, Thomas, has learnt more songs on the violin and spends the time he is in the flat playing it. He also learns that the two of them have received noise complaints.

“Which is ridiculous,” James defends. “Thomas isn’t that loud.”

“Is his playing bad?” Lafayette asks innocently.

James doesn’t answer, pointedly rings up a drink for a customer instead.

So the shift goes as normal. Washington only comes out once, and that is to make sure James is still on his feet. The man flushes at the concern, kicks at invisible dust on the floor.

To Lafayette’s personal disappointment, he doesn’t see hide nor hair of his two latest friends. He finds himself checking his silent phone way too much, despite it remaining void of texts from both Hercules and John. Only Aaron texts him, a series of indignant messages as he attempts to finish the written version of Les Misérables.

 _you could have just been content in watching the musical_ , he replies to Aaron.

 _fuck you_ , Aaron sends back.

Lafayette laughs, tucks his phone back into his pocket. When he turns to the counter, one of the men on his mind is standing in front of the counter.

“Hi Hercules,” he greets, heart half skipping a beat. “The usual right?”

Hercules takes a moment to respond. “Huh?” he articulates brilliantly, looking up from where he was frowning down at the counter. “Yeah, the usual, thanks Laf.”

Lafayette plucks a cup from the towering stack of plastic next to him, scribbles a little drawing on it and Hercules’ order, before passing it back to James. He can barely hear the man’s hum of acknowledgement from under the grind of the machine.

“You okay?”

Hercules grimaces, blinks almost sleepily. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he says. “I just didn’t sleep very well last night because of the two gremlins that were in my house yesterday.”

At Lafayette’s confused look, he clarifies, “John and Alex.”

“Alex?” Lafayette says. He jabs a thumb at the space behind the counter. “Our Alex?”

Hercules nods. “Yeah, your Alex. You guys should check if he’s stealing coffee from here, because that guy is fucking energetic.”

Lafayette blinks. “Well, that doesn’t make sense, he would just be stealing from his dad, and he’s an energizer battery in human form. Why was Alex at your house?”

Hercules shrugs. From the other end of the counter, James sets his drink down with a call of “Hercules?” Lafayette follows his friend as he goes to grab his drink.

“Apparently, him and John met and now they’re best buds. They were up the whole of last night screaming about something, I don’t know, something about the government— Hey, you’re that guy!”

Lafayette blinks, turns to realise Hercules is talking about James. James, who has become a deer in the headlights, with how wide his eyes have gotten.

“I’m me, yes?” James ventures hesitantly.

Hercules comically slaps his forehead, almost as he is a cartoon character. James and Lafayette give him matching concerned looks.

“Right, sorry, I’m Hercules? Hercules Mulligan. I was in that day you nearly fainted, glad to see you’re okay.”

“Right, right! Thanks for the concern—” James replies but Lafayette tunes the rest of the words out in favour of serving the next customer.

He’s a bit concerned about himself.

He was all too happy to see Hercules today, and the number of times he has checked his phone during his shift is a bit worrying. Every time his phone buzzes and it is not from his two new friends, he feels too disappointed. Seeing Hercules, even just talking to him for a minute or two, has his heart picking up.

Hercules is a very nice guy, he muses to himself, keying in drink after drink. Charming, funny, caring too, if the way he acted towards James was any indication. He was artistic, passionate; he has barely known him for a month and yet, Lafayette feels almost at home with the man. If he had met anyone else who was like Hercules, he would have a—

He abruptly shuts the train of thought down. Nope, not thinking about that. He is definitely not thinking about that.

Vaguely, he can hear someone calling his name, but all he can do is to stare down at his hands, frowning.

The idea is out of the question, he will give no thought to it whatsoever. Definitely not.

The man is out of his league, he scolds himself, and he doesn’t even know if Hercules is gay. Hell, he barely knows Hercules at all.

“Lafayette.”

He doesn’t have a crush on Hercules, nope.

“Lafayette.”

Definitely not.

“Lafayette!”

“What?” he finally snaps out of his train of thought, only to realise he is pouring the drink all over his hand. “Fuck!”

In his lost state, he has apparently decided his hand would work just as well as any cup, and now half the drink is on the floor, and Hercules and James are staring at him with identical looks of concern.

“Are you okay?” James asks.

“Peachy.”

Neither of them look particularly convinced. Hercules takes an incredulous sip of his drink.

“Are you sure?” he asks. “Because I’m the one who didn’t get any sleep last night, and you—”

“Are totally fine,” Lafayette fumbles for the mop. His hand is all sticky, gross. “Just got lost in thought. Were you calling me for any reason?”

The two of them still look very concerned.

“Well,” Hercules hesitates, “I wanted to ask if you wanted to chill after you’re done with work.”

He probably shouldn’t say yes.

“Yeah, why not?”

It’s all fine. He doesn’t have a crush.

Hercules finally leaves, with a final farewell to James and a promise to  pick up Lafayette when he is done. He casts back worried glances as he goes, and Lafayette avoids meeting his gaze. He has a drink to remake for a pissed off customer.

The rest of work goes fine. He avoids spilling any more of the customers’ drinks, avoids pissing off too many people, avoids looking at his phone, despite feeling it buzz against his hip again and again.

As their shifts draw to a close, James starts looking out of the window all too often.

“What’s up with you?” Lafayette asks, catching James stare out of the window for the third time in the last minute. James shakes his head.

“Nothing,” he answers too quickly. Lafayette eyes him with disbelief. James avoids looking at him at all.

Eventually, his “nothing” shortly turns out to be something. Thomas walks in through the door and instantly, James’s unease makes sense.

Lafayette has met Thomas all of two times, but yet he feels as if he has a good handle on how Thomas is as a person. And that is, Thomas is not exactly the kind of person who blends in. Even right now, despite it barely being summer, he is dressed in an obnoxiously loud yellow muscle tank and bright green sunglasses. His music can be clearly heard, blasting through his earphones.

“Hey, baby,” he coos at James, whose only response is to roll his eyes.

Despite Thomas’ overt flirtatiousness, James had reassured Lafayette multiple times that the two of them were not dating. It was moments like these that tested Lafayette’s faith in that statement.

It was also moments like these that made Lafayette wonder how Thomas was not instantly slapped by everyone in the vicinity.

“You have to wait, Thomas,” James explains tiredly as he fixes up a drink. Lafayette makes a wild guess that it is for Thomas’, judging by the ten dollar bill that is waving in his face. He accepts the note, hands the change back to Thomas, who immediately drops it into the tip jar. His impression of him narrowly boosts.

“I can’t leave until the next guy gets here,” James continues and Thomas pouts at him.

“Skip work?” he suggests and his roommate simply grunts in reply. Thomas raises his arms in surrender.

“I’ll wait,” he concedes and he drifts over to an empty seat with his drink. Or rather, he drifts towards a seat in general, and the previous occupant vacates it the moment he registers the incoming presence.

James sighs heavily.

“Does it strike you as weird that Thomas—”

“Yes,” James answers shortly. “Who is replacing me?”

“Us,” Lafayette corrects as he fumbles for the schedule on his phone. “I’m working a short shift today. Also, it’s… Alex and Lee.”

James shakes his head solemnly. “Poor Alex,” he offers. He sounds genuinely sorry. Lafayette thinks about Alex’s personality versus Lee’s, and waves off James’ condolences.

“He will be fine,” he assures. “You should worry about Lee instead. In fact, I would like to bet it would be Lee who dies first.”

James shrugs. “You know the guy better than me,” he placates.

As in on cue, the sound of voices reach them even before the door opens. When he turns to look, there John and Alex stand, Hercules grimacing behind them, passionately arguing about something as they walk towards the counter. With every passing word, it feels like they are growing louder. Thomas looks up with a raised eyebrow, and he isn’t alone; each customer is raising their head to look at them, even the porn guy sitting in the corner.

“Hello John, Alex,” Lafayette half-shouts over the rising din. Both of them barely look at him, a half assed nod in his direction, as they continue arguing. Hercules nods embarrassedly at them. More customers are glaring in their direction. Lafayette feels the urge to cover their mouth with cups, just to get them to be quiet.

The office door opens. Washington peers out, his tired soul clearly having left for the day.

“Alex,” he booms, somehow overpowering the two of them. The coffee shop falls into silence, everyone now staring at Washington instead. The man carefully ignores the customers’ gazes, cheeks reddening slightly, as he stares down his now silent son.

“Please don’t make me take you out of the will,” he finally says and slips back into the office with a decisive click of the door.

Slowly, the coffee shop starts up again, with less and less people glancing back at the office door. Lafayette can feel his own life restarting. John and Alex, on the other hand, are sneaking looks at each other, smirking secretly as if they were simply two boys caught misbehaving.

“Please don’t start up again,” Lafayette warns. “I just want to go home. Listen to your father and behave.”

“Yes, mum,” Alex teases, and John snickers. Lafayette considers calling the Guinness Book of Records to come reward him for the most eye rolls in one day. And judging by the look on Hercules’ face, the man feels similarly. He decides to make John a drink instead, just so he doesn’t have to look at his face anymore. He is, however, on the fence about whether to poison him.

James, on the other hand, is wrestling his apron off, having decided Alex is his replacement and that Lafayette deserves to suffer more. “Have fun,” he directs at Lafayette; he can almost taste the sarcasm.

Thomas has drifted back over, and he almost challengingly cocks a hip against the counter. His eyes can’t be seen through his sunglasses but Lafayette is almost sure that he is staring at Alex. He can almost hear the cogs turning in his head.

Whatever his plan is, Lafayette prays to god, please don’t let me be involved in it.

He sets John’s finished drink in front of him. John blinks in surprise.

“I didn’t order this,” he says.

“I know,” Lafayette responds. He had decided against poisoning John traditionally, rather choosing to make him a much sweeter drink than one he would usually consume. “Pay up anyway.”

John grumbles, fumbling for his wallet. “You are so sweet,” he complains.

Lafayette curtseys as he takes the money. “Thank you, sire,” he returns but he gives John the employee discount anyway. John, suitably cowed, pouts.

Lafayette hides his smile.

“Hey,” Hercules pipes up. He has his chin propped up in his hands, gazing up at Lafayette through his eyelashes. Lafayette feels his heart skip a beat, and scolds it for being too gay and too lonely. “You didn’t give _me_ the employee discount.”

“Earn it,” Lafayette shoots back.

Hercules grins, white teeth flashing disarmingly. Lafayette’s heart beats in double time. “By being rude and obnoxious? You got it.”

James, clearly desperate to get away from their idiocy, tugs on Thomas’ arm. “Cmon, let’s go,” he begs.

“Wait a minute, baby,” Thomas mumbles back as he steps up to the cashier, smiling rather nastily at Alexander, who by now had slipped his apron on. Alexander glares in return.

“A grande iced almond milk cappuccino in a large cup with extra ice, extra foam, add shot 2 pump hazelnut, 2 pumps caramel, and caramel drizzle,” Thomas orders.

Alex’s jaw half drops open. “Are you kidding?” he demands.

“Alex,” Lafayette groans. “Be nice.”

Alex begrudgingly punches in the drink order. Lafayette spies James massaging his temples behind Thomas. He also hears Alex’s muffled hiss for help, directed at him when Thomas isn’t paying attention.

Lafayette decides to be cruel instead, pulling off his apron and he spots Lee coming in through the door. “I’m off the clock, have fun with Lee.”

In record time, he clocks out, almost before his replacement even puts his own apron on. As he flees for the door, James grumbling after him about how his roommate had further delayed his return to his bed, Hercules manages to catch up with him, John in tow.

“Hey, hey,” the man coaxes. “Slow down.”

He shakes his head. “Save me,” he begs, and Hercules steps up, tosses a heavy arm around his shoulders and begins guiding them to the door. John follows, loudly yelling a goodbye at his new best friend, with a promise to see him later. Alex, mid fight with Lee, shouts back an affirmative.

Lafayette despairs.

“So, what do you want to eat?” his saviour asks, and as the door closes behind them, he hears Alexander’s cry of “Are you kidding me, motherf—” just before the sound of the coffee grinder drowns out the remainder of his sentence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> v a l i d a t e m e **p l e a s e**
> 
> leave kudos, comments, come say hi on tumblr ~~please please _please_~~ im highkey struggling and your validation helps thanks


	5. V

“Season one!”

“Are you kidding me? Season three was better!”

“Season one is iconic and important.”

“Season three has Jake and Amy!”

“They already have Jake and Amy in season one!”

“Boys!” Hercules interrupts, pinching the bridge of his nose in what could be described as fond exasperation. “Just pick one.”

Lafayette sends one last glare at John, who childishly sticks his tongue out in retaliation. And of course, the only acceptable action for that is to clamber over Hercules’ lap and wrestle the man until he admits defeat.

Hercules simply raises his arms to the sky, demanding an answer from God. God, of course, doesn’t answer, and Hercules settles for leaning back on the sofa and starting up a random episode of Brooklyn 99.

In the meantime, Lafayette has managed to pin John down on the floor by his wrists. John wraps his legs around Lafayette’s waist and he bucks up, attempting to throw him off. His hair has spilled out of his ponytail, and slowly, he is losing strength from how hard he is laughing.

Lafayette himself has begun giggling, and he leans down, resting his head against John’s shaking stomach, to hide how his face scrunches up when he laughs.

“Can you two shush?” Hercules interrupts again. “I can’t hear the tv over you two.”

John pulls his hand out of Lafayette’s feeble grip and pats what he can of Lafayette’s cheek. “I’m still right by the way,” he whispers, before freeing himself to collapse next to Hercules on the sofa.

Once he has regained his strength, Lafayette clambers unsteadily to his feet and staggers to Hercules’ other side. He flops down, and tucks his head into the curve of Hercules’ shoulder, turning slightly so he can watch the episode on the television. The man smells like fabric softener, and something slightly mintier and almost earthy. Hercules pats him gently on the head.

“What’s the season?” Lafayette mumbles.

“Season 2,” Hercules answers, and John and Lafayette hum in mutual appreciation. Common ground then.

The three of them settle in to watch the episode, and the hours race by as they binge on the series. They cringe at the precinct’s antics, laugh at each and every joke, and tease and prod at each other when the show is slow. Somehow, as time passes, they switch positions and Lafayette somehow ends up with his head in Hercules’ lap and his feet in John’s. Hercules absent-mindedly plays with his hair; John strokes his legs unconsciously. All-in-all, he is feeling quite comfortable, and more than once, his eyes drift shut, although he doesn’t really fall asleep.

He grumbles when Hercules excuses himself to the bathroom for way too long, but he is placated by John’s reassuring touch on his thigh, and by the snacks Hercules eventually brings back.

They order dinner, and Lafayette has to sit up for that part, to feast on the pizzas that are delivered.

“Boyle freaks me out,” he comments casually and John grunts in agreement. Hercules is less agreeable.

“He’s a great character,” he objects.

Lafayette shrugs. “He’s great, sure,” he pacifies, “But sometimes, watching him is so cringy I kind of want to run myself over.”

Hercules pouts.

Eventually, the greasy pizza is consumed, and Lafayette excuses himself to the bathroom to wash his hands. As the tap runs, he notes the body soap tucked away on the shelf, and chalks Hercules’ smell up to the bottles there. When he returns to the living room, John is standing by the door, hopping as he attempts to pull his shoes on with one hand. Pizza boxes are balanced precariously on the other hand.

“When did you get a job as a pizza delivery man?” Lafayette teases.

John snorts. “Funny—” the boxes tumble to the floor, to no one’s surprise, and Hercules shakes his head from the sofa—“but I’m actually heading out and throwing these on my way.”

Lafayette cocks an eyebrow. “Going out? At this time?”

“I’m meeting Alex, remember?” John replies. His shoes are finally on, and he scoops up the pizza boxes, grins at Lafayette. “We’re going to head out, probably catch a movie or something.”

“Oh,” Lafayette says weakly, over the sudden lump in his throat. He swallows. “Have fun then.” There’s a strange swooping feeling in his stomach, and it’s disconcerting; he wants it gone.

John gives him a look, one that is almost appraising. “Bye,” he says and then again, even louder, and this time with a smirk, for Hercules’ benefit.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Hercules calls and John snorts, gives him a two-finger salute before he vanishes out the door. Lafayette stands stock still for a moment, staring at the spot that John vacated. He squashes the strange feeling down; he’s just ill, he decides, he should probably go to the doctor sometime soon.

Slowly, he makes his way back to the couch and settles back against Hercules; the man kindly lets himself be used as a pillow, and even wraps his arms around Lafayette to make the two of them more comfortable.

“You okay?” he asks, over the sound of Captain Holt speaking.

Lafayette nods slowly. “’M fine,” he mumbles. “Let’s just watch Brooklyn 99.” He has a strange urge to watch John from the window.

 Not creepy at all, he scolds himself, definitely not creepy.

The two of them watch Brooklyn 99 in relative silence, the only sound being the television. Occasionally, Hercules giggles at a joke, and Lafayette feels him shake with laughter under him. Normalcy slowly returns.

Eventually, they grow bored, and after a bit of discussion, they switch over to Sherlock and spend a good few episodes staring at the detective with wide eyed admiration. Lafayette challenges Hercules to deduct something about him.

The man fails terribly, saying something about Lafayette and a talent for competitive dog grooming, and it is all Lafayette can do to keep himself from crying with laughter.

“Competitive dog grooming?” he chokes out. “Why not go for competitive soap carving or something?”

Hercules shrugs, features scrunching up as he struggles to articulate. “I don’t know what you expected,” he protests. “I’m a piercer, not a detective.”

“Okay, Bones,” Lafayette retorts and they’re off again, shaking with mirth. He can feel abs forming just from the force of his laughter. His eyes are tearing up, and he can barely see, but it’s a good feeling.

Eventually, the laughter dies down, and the two of them lie together, pressed shoulder to shoulder, in companionable silence, save for the occasional giggle. Hercules swats at his leg.

“Hey,” he says, “hey. You didn’t do the deduction thing for me.”

Lafayette snorts. “You just want to laugh at me.”

“Yes,” Hercules confirms without shame. “So do it.”

Lafayette sighs, but he turns to face Hercules. He scans his features, starting at the mess of curls atop his head and down to his untidy shirt. He notes the wrinkles in it and the stain near the collar, before he gets distracted by the broadness of his shoulders.

He doesn’t have a crush, he tells himself, he is simply sad and lonely, and latching on to the newest person he knows.

It’s a strange thing, he thinks, to know how someone’s body feels under yours. He knows how Hercules’ body feels, tucked under his, the warmth that radiates from him. He knows how the weight of Hercules’ arm around his shoulders feels, and how when he had removed his arm, Lafayette had felt disorientated for a moment.

He feels lost if he doesn’t see or hear from Hercules from an extended period of time. He spent his day today talking to him, leaning on him, tucking his head into his shoulder. He even knows how the man smells, for fuck’s sake.

He realises a moment too late the two of them have sat in silence for way too long, and he has been staring at Hercules’ lips the whole time. He glances up at his friend, expecting him to be edging back in concern. But rather, Hercules is staring at him, eyes soft, lips parted.

He watches as Hercules’ gaze drops down to his lips. His heart jumps.

He panics.

“Wow, would you look at the time!” Lafayette loudly announces, and Hercules jumps, shifting back. The man fumbles for his phone, peers at the late hour and huffs in acknowledgment; on his own part, Lafayette has jumped up too and he scrambles for his own phone and his wallet. His heart is beating too loudly in his chest. He needs to leave.

“Sorry,” he half-pants. “I forgot I have work in the morning.” He isn’t lying, he does have work in the morning, but he probably could stay for another hour before he actually needs to go.

Hercules leans forward. “I’ll walk you down,” he offers.

“Nope! No, it’s fine!” Lafayette half shouts. Hercules startles, but he is already bolting for the door. “I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I’m a mess right now, but I really need to go. I’ll see you when I see you, bye!”

And before Hercules can even raise a hand in farewell, Lafayette escapes the flat and flees down the stairs. A single thought keeps bouncing around in his head.

He has a crush on Hercules.

Oh fuck.

*

He doesn’t sleep for the whole night.

He lies awake, staring up at the ceiling, listening to sound of traffic outside his building. When he closes his eyes, he can still feel the heat of Hercules’ body under his, and that is not something he should be able to feel. So, he lies awake, chasing away any thoughts of his new crush. When he inevitably fails at not thinking about it, he groans, and buries his head under his pillow.

At work the next day, he is completely distracted. He is way too slow when opening, creating more messes than clearing them, he answers more than one question with an eloquent “Huh?”, and he screws up so many drinks that Washington has to emerge from his office to ask if he needs to go home early.

He wants to scream. _This_ , he yells internally, _this is why I_ didn’t _want to have a crush and yet, here we are!_

He’s so distracted that even Lee is doing a better job than him. Even now, Lee peers up at him suspiciously and sneers, demanding to know what is wrong with him. He doesn’t even have the energy to turn on the coffee grinder to drown out the grate of his voice.

His buzzing phone goes untouched in his pocket; it fills up with texts that he doesn’t read. He managed to catch a glimpse of it in the morning; the first is from John—lines of heart emojis—his reply to an earlier message, the second from Hercules, a simple _are you okay?_

No, he had typed at first, but he deleted it before he could send it. And even now, the phone keeps buzzing as both Hercules and John continue to check up on him. He almost wants to cry.

Slowly, the hours creep by. An endless stream of faceless customers come and go. There is one embarrassing moment where he thinks he sees Hercules at the end of the line and his knees buckle.

It would be much easier, he thinks to himself dully, if I had a crush on John instead. At least, I know he likes guys.

He serves another hastily remade drink to the last of the disgruntled customers, and after making sure there isn’t anybody else who he has to serve right at that moment, he sinks down into a crouch behind the counter. Lee, annoyed, grunts.

His watch beeps at him; blearily, he twists his wrist to check the time. Another hour before he can leave and return to his bed, to catch up on all the sleep he didn’t get last night. He groans, probably scaring every customer into thinking there is a ghost lurking behind the counter.

It’s fine, he insists internally. It’s just a crush, he will get over it eventually.

In the meantime, all he has to do is to limit his interactions with Hercules. Without the man’s physical presence, the crush will eventually wear off and he will be fine.

Yes, he muses to himself, everything will be okay.

“Lafayette,” he hears.

His head jerks up at the sound, and there Washington stands, towering over him. The man has clearly come to check to make sure he is okay and not wasting company resources, only to find him crouching on the floor. His boss raises an eyebrow at him, hands akimbo.

“Do you need to go home?” Washington asks.

“No,” he groans. “And I’m fine, I promise.”

Washington maintains his cocked eyebrow and Lafayette decides to rest his head against the wooden surface of the counter and groan. His voice echoes against it, and he can practically sense every customer looking up in concern.

The taller man gazes down at him, concern still radiating off him. “Do you want me to take over for a while?” he offers. It’s a tempting offer, and Lafayette relishes the thought of hiding out in the office. But he can’t ask that from his boss.

“No,” he decides. “I’m fine, I just need to… stay down here for a while.”

Behind him, Lee grumbles, accidentally-on-purpose knocking Lafayette with a bony knee, and so he shuffles forward, so his co-worker can reach into the cabinet he was apparently blocking.

“Is Lafayette okay?” a different voice asks, and when he looks up, Aaron is peering down at him from next to Washington.

“Aaron,” he half-whimpers, and he shuffles back so his friend can enter the counter. Aaron slides in, and crouches down to Lafayette’s height, wrapping him into a comforting hug. Lee, who was apparently reaching for his bag, squeezes past Washington and flees without so much as a goodbye. Lafayette can just hear Washington grumbling about it, even with his head buried against Aaron’s body.

“Is he alright?” Aaron’s voice reverberates throughout his body.

“I’m fine,” he mumbles into his shirt.

He can’t see Washington’s gesture, but judging by Aaron’s pat on the back, he assumes Washington either shook his head or just motioned at him in despair.

By now, his knees are aching and so Lafayette nuzzles slightly into Aaron’s neck, who thankfully understands, and with a final pat on his back, pulls away just enough so Lafayette can stagger to his feet. When he stands up, he sees more than one customer glancing away from his direction.

“I’m fine,” he announces again, more for the benefit for his audience than Washington, who only shakes his head and makes for his office.

“Call me if you need anything,” he directs, punctuating his point by staring directly at both Aaron and Lafayette with narrowed eyes. “Anything,” Washington stresses again, before he closes the door—although he leaves it open by just a gap.

Aaron continues to stare at him. The term “fine” feels a little bitter in his mouth right now, so Lafayette simply shakes his head and returns to his usual position by the register. He only has an hour to struggle through anyway.

The hour crawls, and by the end of it, Lafayette’s ears are burning red. Every customer who has come up to the counter has made it a point to ask him if he is okay; his mouth hurts from how much he had to smile at them. Apparently if he doesn’t smile at them, they doubt the truthfulness of his words.

He finds himself checking his watch way too often as Alexander fails to report at the time he is supposed to. He is tired, extremely so, and Alexander is not exactly helping him get home any faster. He mentions this to Aaron, who looks annoyed too.

His co-worker pulls out his phone, taps aggressively at the screen, no doubt texting the miss co-worker. “He’s literally across the street,” he complains to Lafayette, whose eyes are drifting shut. “I saw him just now, when I was coming in. He even waved to me when he went into the parlour.”

“He’s in the parlour?” Lafayette grouches. “For fuck’s sake.”

Aaron shakes his head, shoves his phone back into his back pocket. He sighs tiredly, peers out the window with squinted eyes, as if that would expedite Alexander’s arrival.

“Lafayette,” he decides finally. “How about this, you clock out and on your way out, just go drag Alex back here?”

Lafayette blinks. “Technically, I can’t clock out until Alex is physically here,” he points out. “That’s company policy.”

Straight-faced, Aaron crosses to Washington’s office. He pushes on the open door, just so it swings open a little wider. “Sir,” he begins, “Your son is still not here. Can Lafayette clock out and then drag Alexander back from the tattoo parlour?”

“Yes,” Washington answers in a half-shout. “And tell him if he gets a tattoo, I’m getting a matching one.”

Lafayette huffs out a breath of laughter at the reply and goes to clock out. As he leaves, swinging his bag up onto his shoulder, he calls out a too-loud goodbye to Washington and waves to Aaron. A couple of customers stare at him as he leaves, still concerned about his little break down.

He crosses the road, rubbing at his eyes as he goes. Now that sleep is within his reach, he feels properly exhausted. Finally, he can go to bed and not think for a couple more hours. And maybe, he thinks to himself, maybe, when he wakes up, he will even reply to his messages.

Everything will be better after a nap. He hopes, at least.

The sun is behind him at this time of day, and the sunlight glints off the glass of the parlour; he has to squint to even see against the glare. He can’t look through the window until he is literally pressed up against it. Hopefully, Alex will see him before he even reaches so he won’t have to go in.

A couple more steps and he reaches the parlour. He leans forward, using one hand to shade his eyes as he peeks in through the glass. At first, he can’t see anyone—the parlour is practically empty—and he thinks that maybe Aaron was wrong about where Alex was. But then someone shifts their weight, he had missed them at first glance.

Alex stands at the very back of the shop, with his back to the window. Lafayette raises his free hand, he’s just about to bang on the glass with it, when he takes a closer look. And what he sees sends his heart into freefall.

Alex is not alone. He’s with John.

And they are kissing.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, kudos, validate me please and thank


	6. VI

He had banged on the door in a haze, demanded that Alex go for work before he left. He’s not actually sure what Alexander or John had answered, or even if they answered at all, only that his mouth had worked and he had delivered his message before stumbling home.

And now he was crumbled beneath his sheets, texts still unanswered, staring up at the cracking paint on his ceiling. The sound of late afternoon traffic accompanies his wallowing. There’s a bitter taste in his mouth, from his late realisation, and he growls. Flips himself over and buries his face into his pillow.

So, he thinks sourly, he not only has a crush on Hercules, but he has a crush on John as well.

He had never had a crush on two people at the same time before, and he now marvels at how his feelings for the both of them could not have been more different, and yet the butterflies fluttering in his stomach betrayed everything. His crush on Hercules feels intense, sweet almost exactly like Hercules’ smile and the blush on his cheeks when he had stared at Lafayette so obviously the night before. John was all sly smirks and telling glances, and felt more like an irresistible pull; it was clearly newer too, like a flower that had just begun budding.

Lafayette groans again. Two crushes—that was way too complicated, way above his paygrade. He thinks back to his previous crush, Adrienne with her accent despite having been in America for longer than him, and how he, at the time, had been nothing more than clumsy feet and a tongue that was too big for his mouth. His stomach had been in constant knots around her, and he couldn’t stay a minute in her presence before embarrassing himself. He never told her how he felt, although it was probably painfully obvious.

Bitterness lurks in his mouth and he takes the time to dissect it, pulls it apart under the harshness of the sun streaming in through his window.

Alex has a crush on John as well. Obviously. The dazed looks on their faces when they had been interrupted by Lafayette bursting into through the door said it all.

The fact that he had lost his chance with John could not be disputed either, and Lafayette burrows his face further into his pillow. Alex had gotten there before him—realised and confessed his attraction—and John seemed happy enough with that. Lafayette wasn’t in the habit of breaking up relationships, and so that means he lost his chance.

That’s fine, he decides, he has enough experience with not telling anyone about his crushes; this would simply be another one. John would never find out, and he would get to be happy with Alex, and Lafayette would simply bury his feelings six-feet under until they suffocated alive and everything would be fine.

Lafayette turns back around, squints out the window. The day looks normal, bright and sunny, nothing to suggest he had realised that he had a crush on two different people and caught one of them kissing his co-worker.

He’s still bitter, but it has lessened to a tolerable degree, enough that his eyes are drifting shut, exhaustion finally catching up to him. His unanswered texts burn at the edge of his consciousness, but sleep seems much more appealing than replying. He shuts his eyes, tugs his blanket up high enough that it almost covers him completely, and allows sleep to carry him off.

The last thing he hears before he falls asleep is his phone beeping yet again from its position on the bedside table.

*

It feels only fitting that Alexander is the person he has to work with the next time he shows up to work.

The universe is clearly against him.

Alexander seems fine, acts as he always does, chatters endlessly as he works. Jealousy, a bitch as always, doesn’t feel the need to stick to the plan to act normal, and Lafayette finds himself sniping unnecessarily at Alex, even going so far to give him the same treatment he gives Lee, turning on the coffee grinder every time the man even so much as looks at him. They end up with enough ground coffee to last them to the next day.

He feels bad, Lee deserves the coffee grinder treatment, considering his work ethic; Alexander, despite his chatterbox mouth, does not. But jealousy does not see it that way, and as the shift drags on, he can see Alex drooping with each rebuffed conversational effort. He tries to assuage his guilt by pointing out to himself that Alexander is still chatting at every single customer.

He doesn’t feel like working the register, doesn’t feel like making nice to demanding customers, so he lets Alex handle it and declines to switch roles whenever the offer is broached. This way, the only thing he has to make eye contact with is the machinery.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” he says back. He doesn’t turn around. There is no cup being handed to him, so he suspects this new attempt at a conversation is not exactly professional. He can feel Alexander’s eyes burning into his skull.

“Are you okay?”

“Peachy.”

“You’re acting weird.” Blunt as always. “Is this about me and John?”

“Not everything is about you, Alexander.” He regrets it as soon as he says it. It’s overly cruel for the situation.

The itchy feeling on the back of his neck persists and Lafayette reluctantly gives up staring at the machine. Not surprisingly, Alex is glaring at him. Arms crossed over his chest.

“Sorry,” Lafayette says. The bitterness is thick in his throat, but Alexander doesn’t deserve his cruelty just because something didn’t go his way. He aims for near honesty. “I just got some bad news, shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

Alexander softens slightly, loses the glare in favour of raising an eyebrow. “Anything I can help with?”

Yes, his heart traitorously thinks. “No,” he says instead. “Just let me sulk and I’ll be back to normal soon.”

Alex shrugs. “Okay then,” he says, placated. There are no customers around, and so he cocks a hip against the counter, his shoulders slumping in such a way that Lafayette knows he’s settling in to talk. Before he can protest, Alex is off, and it’s even worse than usual, because he is talking about John and him.

When Lafayette had woken up after his nap, he had slowly replied to the messages his friends had sent, done so whilst in a sleep fog so he couldn’t overthink it. Hercules had sent messages of concern, only worded slightly differently every time, and they had increased in frequency the longer Lafayette had gone without replying him. By the time Lafayette had sent back an assurance he was still living and breathing, Hercules was sending a text every half hour. John had sent an almost equal number of messages, the earlier ones a mishmash of inane thoughts that had occurred to him throughout the day. Eventually, as no replies came in, they slowly became messages of concern. The mishmash of inane thoughts returned right after Lafayette had caught him and Alexander together.

At the same time these messages were being sent, Alexander was out with John, and he now took time to painstakingly recreate his time out in words to Lafayette. Lafayette learned about the movie they went to, John’s opinion on it, and how Alexander had a wildly different one, how they walked the city arguing about the movie, even going so far to stop bewildered strangers on the street to ask them to weigh in on the discussion.

Lafayette wants to be in a coma very badly.

“Laf!”

He jolts, eyes flying open—they had apparently slipped closed during Alexander’s soliloquy—and Alexander is staring at him again, except this time the expression on his face is a mix of hurt and disquiet.

“I’m fine,” he answers automatically. “Just tired. I’m not zoning out.”

Alex looks unconvinced. “Maybe you should go home.”

Lafayette shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he repeats. “Just not in the mood for conversation. If you wanna talk, you can just talk to the customers instead.”

Alex gets the hint, mouth twisting unhappily, and the both of them turn to their respective roles, allowing Lafayette to stew in his corner, as alone as one can be in a crowded coffee shop. No one tries to talk to him, aside from the few customers thanking him as he hands over their drinks.

His phone remains quiet for most of his shift. The few messages he receives is from Aaron, a vaguely worded question about relationships, followed by an immediate take-back, that causes Lafayette to squint at it with worry. Alex’s phone, on the other hand, vibrates strongly from under the counter every few minutes, the sound unpleasant and crude as the wood protests. The man doesn’t stop working to answer it, something Washington would approve of, only doing so when the line of customers lets up. Each text gives him cause to smile and Lafayette eventually starts angling his body away from his co-worker, just to avoid the sight. He has a pretty good idea who is texting Alexander anyway.

When Alex does get to take a break, the man immediately pours himself a venti cold brew—something which causes jealousy to burn low in Lafayette’s stomach—and dashes over to the parlour.

Lafayette watches him leave from the register and grimaces at himself for being jealous and creepy. Aggressively, he wipes down the counter, feeling a brief flash of both satisfaction and annoyance when he sends a stack of empty plastic cups clattering to the floor. He swipes up the fallen cups, huffing to himself all the while, and after he has thrown them away, he changes the song playing over the speakers. The soothing jazz that usually plays over the shop’s speakers is replaced with his angry playlist—aggressively strummed guitars, harshly spat words—and the customers look up in bewilderment when the mood in the coffee shop suddenly does a 180.

It’s unprofessional, he knows, but he can’t find it in himself to care.

Fuck Alex, he thinks to himself, fuck John too. The two could be happy together and Lafayette would not give a fuck and he would not even _look_ at the parlour ever again. Just _fuck everything_.

“Lafayette!”

The door bursts open and in saunters Thomas Jefferson, hair up, dressed in yet another muscle tank, this one a soft grey, and gold-rimmed sunglasses. The customers glance up at the loudness of him, then direct their gaze to Lafayette as if to demand an explanation. He can find none to give.

“Thomas,” he greets. “James isn’t here.”

The man looks almost hurt, touches outstretched fingertips to his heart for emphasis. “I know where my best friend is,” he drawls, “Can’t I be here to see you instead?”

“We barely know each other.”

Thomas waves his hand as if to physically swipe Lafayette’s distrust away. “And I would like to change that. Can I interest you in a drink?”

“You mean, can I make you a drink,” Lafayette corrects. “I’m the only one on duty, so even if you actually want to treat me to a drink, I’m still the one making it. Also, I can’t take a break.”

A headshake of sorrow. “The universe is against us being friends,” Thomas grieves. And without a beat, and without shame, he places an order, thankfully less complicated than the concoctions Lafayette had seen him unleash on his co-workers. Despite his promise to himself, his attention wavers as he makes the drink; his eyes are continuously drawn back to the tattoo parlour, checking endlessly for movement he cannot see. He’s distracted enough that he nearly spills the drink just as he puts the cap on, and frustrated, he practically tosses the drink into Thomas’ hand.

“Woah,” the man protests. “What did I ever do to you?”

Lafayette scrunches up his face.

Thomas takes a sip of his drink, slips the sunglasses off his face as he leans forward conspiratorially. With the temple of the shades, he points at Lafayette. “Does your frustration—” the temple shifts to point in the direction of the parlour— “have anything to do with the owners of that shop?”

Lafayette assumes he gave himself away with how much he is staring at the parlour, and in lieu of an answer, he simply drops his head to the counter with a quiet groan. Thomas hums almost understandingly; Lafayette gets the impression he is suddenly under the care of one Therapist Thomas.

“Which one?”

“Both.”

Thomas hisses in sympathy, pats his head with an icy cold hand, and Lafayette quietly groans into the counter.

“John is seeing Alex,” he confesses pitifully.

“Can’t believe someone could put up with him.”

Lafayette grunts.

“What about the other one?”

He shrugs.

“There’s your solution then,” Thomas points out. “If you can’t have one, you can have the other.”

Lafayette pries his heavy head off the counter and stares at Thomas.

“What.”

Thomas gestures between the coffee shop and the parlour with the temple of his sunglasses yet again. “Tell him how you feel?” he prompts. “You didn’t tell John how you felt, so you lost your shot, right? But you can still tell Hercules.”

“You make it sound like choosing between slices of cake,” Lafayette deflects, embarrassed. Thomas slips his sunglasses back onto his face, shakes his drink at Lafayette, like he is waggling a finger, as if to admonish him.

“Tell Hercules,” he says. Sips his drink as punctuation. “You missed one shot, don’t miss the other.”

The solution feels blindingly simple. Lafayette feels blindingly stupid.

“What if—” he bites his lip— “What if it doesn’t work out?”

Thomas snorts. He would be a shitty therapist, Lafayette thinks as his cheeks burn at the condescension.

“No way,” he rebuffs. “I met him, what, once? The whole time he was in this shop, he was staring at you. Nonstop. I had to fight my way to the counter through the sea of hearts trailing behind him. It will work out.”

Thomas is so confident, so sure. Lafayette wishes he could summon up an ounce of that certainty.

“I—”

There’s a movement from the parlour and his eyes snap straight over. Alex and John emerge from the shop, hand in hand, glowing with newfound love. The sight weakens his knees; his stomach feels like it decided to take a step off the empire state building.

“You sure it will work?” his mouth is moving, tongue laden down in his mouth. Thomas, or what he could see of him from the corner of his eye, triumphantly takes a sip of his drink.

“Positive,” the affirmation almost echoes.

Lafayette whirls around, whips up a venti white chocolate mocha, pays for it—full price, he might add—all in record time. John and Alex are taking their sweet time in returning to the shop, and Lafayette finishes just as John delivers Alex to the counter.

“John,” he blurts out, interrupting the man just before he kisses Alex, “is Hercules in the shop?”

John furrows his brow, reaches up a hand to scratch at the hair just under his beanie. The adoration flowing off Alexander is so thick Lafayette can almost touch it. He takes a moment to wish he was the one that could express his adoration so openly.

“Yeah?” John confirms confusedly. “You alright?”

“Wonderful,” he says. He scoops up the drink, wrangles the apron off him, nearly drops the drink in his hurry. John and Alex squint at him warily, Thomas preens as if he is a proud mother hen. “I gotta go.”

He races over to the parlour, heart thrumming in his chest. In the glass of the parlour’s window, he looks over his appearance; he looks crazed behind the eyes, and his hair is mussed. His thoughts are a haze. He smooths his hair as best as he can, takes a gulp of air—god, he’s going to tell Hercules how he feels—and he steps through the door.

“Hey!” Hercules greets, smiling over from where he is peering down at a customer’s ear. “Give me a minute, I’m almost done here, yeah?” He catches sight of the drink in Lafayette’s hand and beams. “You’re so sweet to me,” he coos, before he turns back to his customer.

Lafayette taps his foot impatiently as he waits for Hercules to be done. He can hear the piercer’s soft voice as he walks the customer through the process, needle delicately pressed against the flesh of their ear.

“Take a deep breath in,” Hercules murmurs, and Lafayette obeys, even though the instructions aren’t for him. Air fills his lungs and— “Breathe out,” Hercules coaxes— and he releases a breath. He feels marginally calmer, although his heart is flip-flopping at the sight of Hercules.

The customer shakes his head at the pain, but grins up at Hercules anyway when the man pats them on the shoulder. Lafayette looks around the shop as he waits for them to wrap up; there is a new tattoo outline on the wall—a gardenia—and he can’t help but bounce on his toes at the sight.

The customer pays, waves goodbye to Hercules and walks out into the light of the afternoon. The moment the door shuts, Lafayette crosses to Hercules and hands him his drink.

“On the house,” he announces and Hercules smiles at him, takes a sip to say thank you.

“You had me worried for a moment the other day,” he reproves. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Lafayette laughs self-deprecatingly, “Sorry about that. The thing is, on that night, I came to a bit of a realisation.”

Hercules raises an eyebrow. “Do share,” he pronounces exaggeratedly.

Lafayette rocks back and forth on his heels. “You see,” he hesitates, “I realised I have a crush on you.”

No response. Lafayette finds himself staring at a point over Hercules’ shoulder rather than at his crush himself.

“I actually came over here to see if you would go out with me sometime.”

Count of three, he tells himself, when he looks back at Hercules, the man will be happy. He will be ecstatic and Lafayette will be able to jump into his arms and kiss him senseless.

One, he thinks, fingers twisting behind his back, two, three.

Hercules is not happy.

In fact, the man isn’t even looking at Lafayette. His whole face is blushing red, and it is his turn to rock back and forth on his heels.

“Laf,” Hercules says. “I’m kind of seeing someone right now.”

Somehow, Lafayette’s stomach has made its way to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and has thrown itself off. The embarrassment eats at him. His feet stumble for the door, heart pounding in his chest; he feels almost sick. Lafayette doesn’t meet Hercules’ eyes either. “I’m sorry,” his tongue feels like it’s made of lead. “I didn’t know, I’m just gonna go.”

“Lafayette,” Hercules reaches out and he lurches back before his crush can even brush his shirt sleeve. The pity burns at him, his cheeks are burning. He wishes he had never listened to Thomas Jefferson.

“’M sorry,” he blurts and he flees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sad here's my fic please validate me by leaving kudos and comments or even chatting with me on tumblr ilu love me back thanks
> 
> edit 31/3: no i didn't misname this chapter what are you talking about


	7. VII

Hercules doesn’t come by the shop for over a week.

That’s fine.

John comes by every time Alex is working.

That’s fine too.

The sugar packets crinkle in protest as Lafayette clenches his fist at the sound of laughter coming from behind him. John has taken to standing at the end of the counter, teasing Alex relentlessly as his co-worker makes drink after drink. When Lafayette had realised that John would linger wherever Alex was closest to, he had taken over the register. This way, John wouldn’t block the line, and Lafayette can actually work, like he is paid to do.

Now, with an absence of orders, Lafayette takes the opportunity to restock the condiment bar. He hasn’t looked at John once while working today; he’s guessing by the mutual lack of eye contact that John had learnt about what happened between Hercules and him and now the both of them are avoiding him.

Which is fine.

Obviously.

It’s not just the lack of physical contact, Hercules hasn’t even bothered to text him at all—or rather he had sent a message a day after the Incident, and when Lafayette didn’t reply, the texts dried up—and his phone has been a devoid of texts from John as well. The only people he’s been receiving messages from is Alex—who sent a single cryptid text in the dead of the night—and Aaron. He had finished Les Mis, even managed to convince James to watch the movie with him, and now has moved on to his next book. Lafayette is still waiting on his review.

God, he’s so _embarrassed_. When he had returned to the shop, Thomas had taken one look at his face, cursed and promptly fled. Lafayette had wanted to chase him down the street and scream in his face, but he felt more like curling up into a ball on the floor and simply fading from existence. It didn’t help that James texted him after his shift, apologising for Thomas’ behaviour.

When he had next returned for work, he tried to act natural, and not like he had been mortally wounded from the rejection(s). His act didn’t last long, for when Washington reported for work, his boss had taken one glance at him before asking if everything was okay. He tried to brush it off, but the gig was up when Washington caught Lafayette’s Lee-ish expression when John had kissed Alex in the middle of his shift. They didn’t talk about it, but Lafayette didn’t miss how his boss had taken to coming out of his office when John was around.

Alex still insisted on sharing with Lafayette every detail of his time with John, and the coffee grinder wasn’t exactly a long-term solution, so he had to suck it up and listen to painfully comprehensive stories. As much as possible, and for the sake of his own sanity, Lafayette tried to steer the conversation from relationships, but it always wound back up at “Well, John said—”

He’s almost grateful when he has to work with Lee now.

His eyes are fixated on his watch, counting down the seconds until Alex’s shift is over. The moment the shift ends, he knows Alex will make his escape, with John in tow, back to the parlour. He doesn’t even know how John can afford to stay so long at the coffee shop. Doesn’t he have customers?

Washington, also aware that Alex’s shift is winding to a close, begins his slow return to his office, taking a detour into the counter, as if he is searching for something. Lafayette knows it’s because the counter is the best place to lurk if he wants to check up on the both of them, he can see Washington’s warped reflection in the metal of the cinnamon shaker, watching him.

John lets out a pretty peal of laughter. Lafayette’s watch beeps. The door swings open and in Aaron rushes, reporting to work just in time. Alex brightens up.

He takes a step back, whirls around and nearly crashes into Washington behind him. His father doesn’t even flinch, only raises an eyebrow at him as he looks between him and John. _Who’s this little shit_ , the eyebrow says. Under his scrutiny, John awkwardly scuttles to the other side of the counter. Aaron delivers his bag under the counter and makes a beeline for the bathroom.

Alex doesn’t take the bait, doesn’t break eye contact with his father as he wrangles his apron off. “I’m going out, Dad” he says. “Don’t wait up.” And he steps around Washington, drops off his apron in the backroom and makes for the door. He doesn’t even bother to check if Washington approves of his proposal. “John!”

“Hercules says hi, by the way,” Lafayette hears and when he looks up, John is smirking at him. He doesn’t manage to absorb the message until John is chasing after Alex, but when he does, he stubbornly doesn’t think about it. Instead, he sweeps back to the counter, and refuses to look at the parlour.

“How long has that been going on?” Washington murmurs, and Lafayette looks up at him to see him staring at the parlour.

“A week?”

Washington hums in reply, arms folded across his chest, as he continues staring at the shop. Lafayette glances at the parlour as well, just in case there is something he’s missing.

“What’s that boy like?”

“John?” Lafayette asks, stunned. He flounders for a moment; he probably shouldn’t suddenly start crying about John to his boss. Saying he has a crush on the man may be out of the question as well. He settles for a glowing recommendation of “He’s nice.” Washington glances down at him, before his eyes return to the shop.

Lafayette assumes it’s the end of their conversation and looks back down. His boss eventually returns to his office, but from the corner of his eyes, he can see the man linger at the door, tapping his fingers against the frame as he mulls over his next words.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Washington finally says, and with another meaningful glance at the parlour, he shuts the door. Lafayette feels both oddly touched and mystified by Washington’s apparent psychic abilities.

“What’s up with you?” he hears Aaron say. The man turns into the counter, back from his bathroom trip, and as he slips his apron over his head, he continues to speak, despite the muffling of his voice. “Are you okay?”

“What does it mean to be okay?” Lafayette intones dramatically.

“I guess not then,” and Aaron shakes his head as he leans against the counter, eying Lafayette up and down. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“No, seriously, what happened?” Aaron asks. “Alex has been hounding me about you, he said you’ve been acting weird for a while.”

“You talk about me?”

“When he’s not talking about his new boyfriend, yeah.”

At the mention of John, Lafayette bites at his lips, keeping an avalanche of words at bay. Instead, he turns to the machinery and wipes it down, never mind he already did it just before Aaron came in.

Aaron eyes him for another moment, but sensing that Lafayette is not in a talking mood, he doesn’t push. Rather, he turns to the register as well, just as a customer steps up to order. Lafayette adores him for it. He repays the man by making the drink as best as he can, and handing it to the customer, cheerfully waving them off.

As if no time had passed, Aaron casually interjects, “Hercules came by the other day.”

His throat dries up. “He did?” His voice is almost embarrassingly cracked.

Aaron nods, but casually looks away, as if he doesn’t know how his sudden news is affecting Lafayette. “Short while,” he hums. “Just came in, ordered a drink and left. Looked weird though.”

“Weird how?”

Aaron shrugs. “Kinda shaky. Why?”

“No reason,” comes the excuse. A stream of customers enters the door, chattering like birds, they will be kept busy for a while. It’s a reprieve and he is thankful. Lafayette withdraws away to his own corner of the counter, gnawing on his lip.

He spends the next half hour tending to the sudden swarm of customers, making drinks, heating up food, all the while decidedly not thinking about Hercules. It’s a tricky business, with him constantly failing, inevitably thinking about him the moment something even remotely brought up the soul crushing memory of being rejected. Aaron’s anecdote had only been the latest failure in a line of disappointments.

He feels his cheeks beginning to burn again. In his mind, he watches as John and Alex cross to the parlour, sees them shout something he can’t hear as they step into the shop, sees Hercules beam up at them—happy to see them, and only them. Lafayette’s been trying not to think about either Hercules or John—although the latter is harder than the former, with how much he is around—and he had assumed that Hercules was doing the same thing.

But John’s “Hercules said hi, by the way,” and Aaron’s “Hercules came by the other day,” has him fidgety and fixated.

 _Was Hercules thinking about him_ , his heart wonders.

 _Yes, because you’re a laughing stock_ , his brain snaps back and Lafayette glares down at the latest drink in his hand. He stalks to the end of the counter, hands the drink over without making eye contact. Of course, Hercules was thinking about him, because he made a fool out of himself. And he probably didn’t even say hi, just John’s way of teasing him.

For a moment, Lafayette wishes he was never a barista **.**

He kinda wishes he never met Hercules and John too.

He realises a moment too late his hand is resting against the hot expresso machine and he yanks it away, hissing at the burn. Isn’t that a perfect metaphor, he thinks miserably, don’t stop to think and fuck yourself over instead. Aaron looks over at the sound of him hissing and frowns in concern.

Are you okay, the tilt of his mouth says.

Fuck no, the scalded part of Lafayette’s hand spits.

“You need the first aid kit?” Aaron asks, and the customer in front of him, mouth half-opened to order, looks over at him in concern. He shakes his head, forcing on a smile for the customer’s sake; although they do not look any less concerned, he supposes he might be grimacing instead.

“Just need to run it under cold water for a moment,” he says as he crosses to the sink. “I’ll be fine.” Aaron turns back to the customer after a pause, and Lafayette abruptly wishes he can text Hercules or John.

With wet hands, he fumbles his phone out of his pocket, and with much difficulty, he unlocks it. He only gets as far as opening the messages app, before he hesitates, fingers halting just as he is about to tap on their names.

Should he be texting Hercules? Should he be texting John? Is it weird, concerning their recent radio silence? Would he be interrupting something between John and Alex for that matter? Do John or Hercules even want to hear from him?

His phone makes the decision for him by slipping out of his loose grip and clattering to the floor. The frustration boils up at him.

“Fuck,” he hisses yet again as he grabs his phone. The sound the phone had made when it hit the floor had not been good and he fears the worst. And true enough, the screen is cracked, even under the screen protector, a tiny fracture in the top left corner.

It’s really not his day and he curses as he stuffs his phone roughly into his back pocket. At least his contract is up soon. But if him dropping his phone was not a sign not to text his estranged friends, he doesn’t know what is.

He stubbornly ignores his phone for the rest of the day, tries his best to avoid looking at the parlour—which he fails at miserably—and tries to avoid thinking about Hercules or John—which he also fails at. At one point, when he is pretending not to watch the shop, the parlour door opens and John and Alex step out, arms wrapped around each other. He immediately turns his back and keeps his focus on the very uninteresting blenders in front of him. Aaron side-glances at him, just to make sure he is okay.

Of course, when he thinks it’s been enough time, when he thinks John and Alex would have long walked away, he turns back and Hercules is peering out the front door of his parlour, staring straight through the windows of the coffee shop. Their eyes lock for a heartbeat, before Hercules slams the door and Lafayette turns his back yet again.

The rest of his shift goes as smooth as it can—although he gets shouted at by a customer for getting their order wrong, even though he swears up and down the customer asked for a hot drink and not iced, the fucker—and before he knows it, the last of the stragglers have been chased out of the door by the dimming lights and he is trying to dissuade a persistent last minute customer from coming in.

“Sir, we’re closed.”

“People are still in your shop!”

“They are all leaving, because we are _closed_.”

“Well,” Aaron huffs, once the customer had stormed off in a rage, “That could have been worse.”

“Just say it was a shitty shift,” Lafayette groans, head resting against the cool glass of the door. “It was a shitty shift, it’s been a shitty day, I wanna go home.”

“Fair enough,” Aaron shrugs and the two of them rush to close up. Machines are cleaned, tables are wiped, cash is counted and finally the two of them stand in a mostly clean coffee shop, exhausted and weary. Washington was long gone by this point, and when he left, his jaw had been set in a way that had Lafayette cruelly dreaming about Alex being given a stern talking-to about John.

They hang up their aprons, and silently troop out the door, Aaron fumbling with the keys as he goes.

“Are you okay,” he asks as they go. Outside, in the dark, he gets down on one knee to lock the doors. “You’ve been acting really weird lately.”

Lafayette shrugs.

Honestly, he’s so tired. He’s been rejected twice within the last week, once knowingly and once unknowingly, and it eats away at him. He finds it hard to think about John and Hercules in any shape or form. The parlour’s presence behind him burns, as does the lack of messages from the two people he considers—considered? —friends and yet he is such a sad person that he can tell from the weird glints off the coffee shop’s doors that the lights are on in Hercules and John’s house. He refuses to look directly at it.

His co-worker cranes his neck to look at him. Lafayette avoids looking at him, and stares instead at the lengthiness of his torso. Despite the strange lighting from the flickering lamp posts, Aaron doesn’t look half bad. There’s a strange ache in his chest and a thought, half-formed, flickers in his head.

“You know,” Aaron continues, “if you wanted to talk, you can talk to m—”

“Aaron,” he suddenly interrupts. “Do you wanna go out on a date sometime?”

Aaron’s mouth clicks shut.

The thoughts start to whir in Lafayette’s brain. It’s a good idea, he thinks to himself almost giddily. It’s a brilliant one. He knows Aaron, knows him as intimately as one can from working gruelling hours together. Aaron is sweet, kind, intelligent, definitely not bad to look at, it could work. It would work. He can’t believe he never thought of this before.

“We could work, Aaron—” he realises his mouth is running on without his permission— “We know each other, we know we can spend hours in each other’s presence without wanting to commit murder, we know we like each other— We should go on a date. We would totally work well. What do you say?”

The scene feels incredibly familiar, and not in a good way. Aaron isn’t saying anything, but he slowly stands up and turns to face him, arms crossed over his chest.

“Laf,” the man begins slowly, as if he was feeling his way out of a dark tunnel. “Where is this coming from?”

Lafayette’s mouth refuses to be stopped. “We could work,” it says, convinced.

Aaron raises an eyebrow, counts off a finger as if reading off a list. “You have never expressed feelings for me before—” another finger— “You don’t actually really know that much about me—” yet another finger— “You have been acting very strangely lately. Are you _sure_ you’re okay?”

“What do you mean I don’t know much about you?” he returns defensively.

“Where do I live, Laf?”

The question brings him up short. He fumbles, scrambling for even a sliver of information to answer Aaron’s question. When he fails, the question flicks him on the forehead; the ridiculousness of what he’s doing hits him, and his shoulders slump, defeated.

Aaron is still staring at him carefully. “Are you okay?” he asks again and Lafayette huffs, shakes his head as he keeps his eyes on the floor.

Slowly, hesitantly, Aaron crosses over to him and gently pats him on the shoulder. “What do you need?” he asks and Lafayette sighs in lieu of an answer, hoists his bag higher up on his other shoulder.

“I—” he hesitates, looks across at the darkened parlour, he can just make out the mashed-together initials of Hercules and John that name the shop— “I just need to curl up in a hole somewhere.”

Aaron hums softly, pats him on the shoulder yet again. “Look,” he breathes. “Whatever it is that’s going on, I hope it works out for you soon. But don’t—” his voice drops lower in exasperation— “do anything stupid. Alright?”

Lafayette nods and Aaron squeezes him on the shoulder reassuringly before pushing him off in the direction of his home. “Go home,” his friend advises and Lafayette sags, suddenly more exhausted than before. That’s probably the best idea, and he murmurs in agreement, turns to make his way back to his lonely apartment. He will need, he thinks to himself, a little time to lick his wounds.

He needs to hide away for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol im bitter and laf still gets hurt sorry
> 
> leave comments and kudos they encourage me when writing gets tough
> 
> also come say hi on tumblr! it's always nice to hear from yall


	8. VIII

“Oh my god, you’re in love with me, aren’t you?”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Lafayette mutters from his fetal position on the couch, eyes fixated on the curl of the actor’s mouth. “No shit, they’re in love with you.”

As tears rolled down the actor’s cheeks, Lafayette refocuses on the blanket he has pulled over him and picks at a loose thread. The sofa is uncomfortably warm from his own body heat, it doesn’t help that it has practically moulded to the curve of his spine at this point.

He’s a good three seasons into this new show, considering he only started it on the day Aaron had rejected him. It’s some mindless crime show, filled with characters who make questionable decisions that power their storyline; Lafayette feels a strong kinship with the one crying on the street in the rain.

When he stretches out his toes, they bump into the empty cup—stained with the last dregs of cold tea—balancing precariously on the side table. He should really wash that cup. And the bowl next to it. And the growing collection of dirty dishes collecting dust in various nooks and crannies of the apartment. It has been a long time since his house has looked this bad; meaning ages ago, when there had been books covering any and every viable surface of the house and a stressed-out Lafayette collapsed on a dusty floor, right in the middle of the chaos.

His work uniform drapes unused over a nearby chair. He hasn’t been to work for a good few days, more than a full-time employee should be away from their work to be honest. When Washington had sent him that week’s schedule, in which his name only appeared in a grand total of two times, it was with even more formalness than there usually was. Lafayette couldn’t gather up the appropriate amount of terror.

He’s practicing for his future as an actor, Lafayette thinks bitterly, glaring at the actor who had finally decided to run for shelter from the down pouring storm; he’s imitating his text conversations with John and Hercules.

The only way he can do a better job is to change his name and move to Mexico; but as far as the parlour owners were concerned, that’s exactly what he has done. He has up and vanished. Never to be seen again. He’s the Loch Ness monster, he’s Bigfoot, he’s a chupacabra. A cryptid, only to seen from the corner of one’s eye, and very rarely.

And tomorrow there will be a rare sighting, for his name’s scheduled for the closing shift. (This metaphor has gotten away from him, just a little bit.) A shift with Alexander, something that the other man had been very excited about. His dying phone had been vibrating on and off during his hibernation; Alex had apparently come up with some plan to improve the store. His plan had been run through almost every employee— _plan my funeral_ , Aaron sent—and some customers— _a travesty_ , a message from Thomas reads. Lafayette is to be his next victim; apparently, he’s the only one to not have suffered through the plan and Alex was very excited to share.

_this is going to be great!!!!!_

Lafayette let his phone vibrate itself to death.

When he pries himself from the sofa’s grip, his joints crack alarmingly and he has to hobble to the kitchen, like a man a good 50 years older than him. The noise from his joints crack even louder when he bends to collect the gross dishes strewn about the apartment; the sink is overflowing when he finally gets to the kitchen.

It takes a good few minutes to scrub the dishes clean; the stains have seeped into them and he has to grit his teeth as he grinds the sponge against the ceramic surfaces. Soap runs down his forearms and drips off his elbows onto the floor, he fidgets at the uncomfortably cold sensation.

The television is still playing in the background; a detective gasping as they discover the missing clue to link them to the criminal, another radiating almost audible confusion as they wait for an explanation. Lafayette has long lost track of the episode, he’s not actually sure what crime they’re solving this time round—he was only really focusing when the character on screen had professed their love for the other. It speaks volumes.

He can just vaguely hear the episodes wrapping up; the running water all but drowns out the detectives as they clip the cuffs around the criminal’s wrists and read him his rights. Ceramic clinks together as the dishes are set aside, they block out the formalness seeping from his television as the rejected character is forced to meet their paramour once more. Lafayette can imagine how the scene plays out in his head: the rejected character refusing to meet their ex-lover’s eyes, the awful stiffness between the two of them, metaphorical flames engulfing the room as their relationship comes to a screeching halt.

During his self-enforced solitude, Lafayette, in between cramming as much ice-cream as he possibly could into his mouth, took great consolation in the fact that he didn’t exactly tell Hercules he loved him; and to the best of his knowledge, John remained ignorant of his little crush. He may have fucked up the whole Hercules situation, but he would like to at least maintain some form of strained friendship with John. He only has to keep everything a secret until his feelings fade.

The scene playing out in his living room taunts him. He scrubs harder at another pot.

The bottom of the sink gradually becomes visible again; piles of dishes stack up dangerously high next to the sink. When he puts them away, he has to step around tiny drops of water on the floor, the sound of clacking ceramic hurt his ears when they are stashed into his cupboards. There is no backing track to his everyday movements, the television has gone silent.

Walking back into his quiet living room feels strange, the absence of voices irk him. The next episode is still buffering painfully slow, and he reaches for the remote before it can properly load and turns off the television. When he turns it off, it feels almost as if he has just woken up; the sound of traffic eventually reaches his ears, slowly, as if they are waking up with him. His house feels abruptly more real with that low rumbling of cars; he’s been existing in a liminal space these last few days.

His work uniform catches his eye. It hangs over his chair, an innocuous reminder both to actually keep his laundry and of his fate tomorrow. The fabric is soft beneath his palm, he listens to the low hum of night traffic outside his house. Less than 24 hours, he thinks, less than 24 hours until he will have to look John in the face; re-emerging into society is turning out to be more difficult than he had predicted.

Snagging his blanket off the sofa sends something clattering onto the floor. It’s his phone, tortured, slightly broken, and also dead, glaring up at him from the floor. Unanswered messages, he’s reminded.

He doesn’t want to re-enter society anymore.

*

It’s not that making coffee or serving food is particularly difficult, Lafayette reflects, it’s the emotional labour he’s forced to do.

Smiling at customers, acting as if he really cares about how their day went, pretending that he isn’t the slightest bit annoyed when they spill their drink all over the floor, not catapulting across the counter murderously when they insist he messed up their drink, it’s all very tiring.

The constant flow of words streaming out from his co-worker’s mouth isn’t exactly the most pleasant backing track he could get in all this chaos. He finds words in between cups of coffee, and buttons on the expression machine, and the creases on an impatient customer’s face, all bits and pieces of Alexander’s apparent life-changing plan to “fix” the coffee shop.

They had started at the same time, Aaron and James trading off aprons when the two of them had walked in through the door. Well, he had dragged himself in, kicking and screaming, and Aaron grimaced when he saw him, a consoling pat on the back to fortify him for the shift ahead.

_it’s a long plan_ , his text had confided.

_detailed_

Lafayette isn’t a very subtle person, but yet when he drops hints about going in to talk to Washington, Alex seemed particularly tone-deaf, taking the chance to natter even harder about shift scheduling and upgrades to machines.

He escapes about halfway through his shift—Alex isn’t even a quarter-way done with his plan—to take a breather. Standing in the grim alleyway between the coffee shop and its neighbour is infinitely better than listening to Alex talk, even though he chokes on the stink of two-day old garbage and has to stand around suspicious puddles.

The parlour shop taunts him from across the street; he longs to escape into it for a reprieve. But the idea of being in John’s knowing company and Hercules’ awkward presence stops him from even making a move. He is frozen in a dirty alley, staring. Unease steals the time away from him and before he knows it, his ten minutes is up and he is due back inside.

When he steps back in, Alexander is scribbling on a napkin behind the counter. Ink soaks through the thin paper with each swoop of the oen. The creak of the doors has his head shooting up, and Alexander beams at him with undisguised glee.

“I’ve improved on my plan while you were on break,” Alexander confides, waving his napkin in the air—it is not the white flag Lafayette wishes it was— “And I think you’ll really like how this plan is progressing— Hey, are you okay?”

Maybe it’s the grimace on his face, or maybe he had gotten something on it while outside, that gives Alex cause for concern, but he really couldn’t care less. He shakes his head, jabs a thumb over his shoulder  at the parlour.

“Not really,” he grits, “but listen, you can take a break, visit your…boyfriend for a while if you want?”

Say yes, his mind screams, just take the chance and go.

Alexander chews on his lip, peers at him over his glasses. “You sure?” he asks but his fingers are twitching like he is prepared to vault over the counter to reach John faster.

Lafayette just smiles, a non-answer, but Alex is ready and bolts for the door, his smile growing wider at the thought of meeting John. Lafayette just sighs. Ten extra minutes of reprieve. Six hundred seconds more of almost silence. It’s better than nothing.

The customers are, for once, mostly satisfied and he takes the chance to lounge behind the counter, crouching slightly, as he always does, to dissuade any potential customer from ordering, just for a while. He pulls his cracked phone from his pocket, scrolls through his twitter—he has to press his thumb into the screen a little harder to scroll up—and he is happy to remain in this hunched position, away from everyone, but a familiar voice catches his attention.

“Hey Laf.”

His neck creaks alarmingly when his head flies around and he stares with wide eyes at Hercules, one of the objects of his affection, who is shyly scuffing his shoe on the floor.

“Hi.” God, he might as well be a frog, considering how his voice croaks.

Hercules opens his mouth and then clicks it shut. His mouth gasps for words he cannot find and Lafayette robs him of his chance to.

“I’ll just get you your usual,” he blurts out and he turns back around. His heart is pounding away in his chest and he can feel how flushed his face is as he makes Hercules a drink. He never considered the other man would come into the shop today, he was only prepared for John to show up. He refuses to linger on how good Hercules looks today; it’s only going to make it harder for him to not have a crush on the man.

When he turns back to hand his drink over to Hercules, he’s almost startled by the man’s closeness, even though he knew that Hercules would be waiting by the end of the counter. He tries not to drop the drink when he hands it over, but the way his hand trembles makes it difficult not to do so.

“Here you go,” he mumbles and he is ready to flee to somewhere Hercules can’t see him, so his embarrassment won’t be available for public viewing. But his plans are halted when Hercules speaks again.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” the other man says, almost unnaturally cheerful. Lafayette doesn’t look directly at him, but he can just see a glimpse of a blush gracing Hercules’ face. Oh god, he managed to embarrass Hercules too, and now the man thinks he is the one to solve it.

“Yeah,” he chokes out. “Just been away, you know?”

Hercules hums, takes a pull of his drink as if the answer to a less awkward conversation lies somewhere at the bottom of the cup. The man fumbles for another conversational topic but Lafayette’s face grows ever redder; he needs an escape plan.

“Well I wouldn’t want to keep you,” Lafayette says abruptly, gesturing out the door in the parlour’s direction. “I’m sure you’re really busy today.”

“Actually, I’m free—” Hercules begins, but then another customer swans up to the counter and Lafayette lunges for his escape.

“Sorry, gotta work,” he declares, almost lost in his state of panic. “I’ll see you around.”

He throws himself into his work with almost a blind enthusiasm, he can see Hercules gaping from the end of the counter; the words the man searches for still elude him. Finally, the man settles on a promise to text later, and with a final try to catch Lafayette’s eyes, he leaves. He waves as he goes.

Lafayette tries not to hold him to his promise. He also doesn’t return the wave.

He finishes up with the customer just as Alex returns, face glowing with joy. “Your mind is going to be fucking blown,” he declares. He pulls even more paper from his pockets, they are filled with even more writing.

His shift is only half over, but already, Lafayette has never been more exhausted. “Great,” he returns, dripping sarcasm. Alex doesn’t seem to notice.

In between run-on sentences about trash bins, and sugar packets, Lafayette’s phone beeps. Twice. He hits read, right in front of Alex. The man doesn’t seem to notice or care. One, a message from Aaron, asking if he would like to hang out with him tonight. He hesitates over his reply, switches over to the second text first. The other, a message from Hercules.

_nice to see you today_

He switches back to the first text, tells Aaron he will see him after work.

He can’t really believe Hercules texted. He has the physical evidence in his phone, all 21 digital characters of it, that the piercer and tattooist had to type out, his fingers on a keypad. He knows the man promised he would, and from the little time he has known Hercules, the man seems like the type to keep his promises.

He shoves his phone back into his pocket. He’s not going to think about it anymore.

He wishes he can stop thinking about it.

Cup after cup of coffee, wet rings on the wooden surface of the counter, small smiles at nameless vessels lining up in front of his counter, and Alex is still talking. Lafayette pretends all the while he’s listening, humming and nodding where appropriate. His colleague doesn’t even seem to notice his mental absence. He feels almost like a bobble head; his one function is to nod his head.

He thought he would feel better after his own isolation, but all that happened was that it made Hercules’ small appearance in his life headier. He almost feels haunted by the man. All of this makes him a little tetchy, a little quicker to irritation, mostly at himself from being the way he is, and a little at Alex for _still_ talking.

The man talks for almost 6 hours, starting from the end of his break to the shop’s closing. At one point, Washington appears from his office, leather bag swung over his shoulder, as he makes his way home. He takes one look at his son, then glances at Lafayette. The look is filled with pity, but there’s a hint of vindication, as if Washington is saying _now you know how I feel_.

At closing, he sends Alex to fend off the more zealous customers who insist on coming in—which he does—but he does it, in between shouting back half-heard phrases about his plan. He catches something about cake, and Lafayette buries his head in his hands and groans in exhaustion.

Finally, finally, as they both leave the store, Alex wraps up his explanation of his plan. “So,” he huffs— Lafayette notes his voice doesn’t sound the least bit hoarse— “What do you think?”

The once-flickering street light has now blown, the street is almost pitch black. He can barely see the lock on the door as he squats to fiddle with it. He hums as agreeably as he can.

Lafayette can practically hear Alex’s mouth spilt into a smile. “Great!” the man announces. “I knew you would like it. John said you would—”

His hand slips just before he can put the key in the lock. “Did he?”

“Yeah!” Alex sounds so proud. “I told him about my plan and he said you would really enjoy it—”

He tries again, tries to put the key in the lock. It only skids around the grey metal of the lock and Lafayette grunts in frustration.

“And John has been telling me recently—”

Even moving to the side doesn’t help, there is no more light to let through so he can see the lock. He squints in the darkness.

“He’s really great—”

The key slips again. He bangs his hand against the lock. It does nothing but hurts his hand.

“I dunno, I think I might l—”

“Look,” he spits, and he is so exasperated and angry with Alexander’s incessant talking that he is shaking with it. “Do you ever fucking shut up?”

And Alex’s mouth clicks shut, faster than he does when Washington walks into work, faster than that first day when Aaron managed to get him to be quiet; he is just silent. He looks _hurt_ , brows furrowing into a little knot right in the center of his head.

There’s a quiet voice in the back of Lafayette’s mind, warning him to stop talking, to not make matters worse, but he pushes it aside in favour of spewing poison from out his mouth.

“I don’t want,” he hisses, “to hear about your boyfriend. I don’t want to hear about your ridiculous plan that will not work. I don’t want to hear about literally anything you want to talk about, okay?”

Alex’s jaw sets tight; his eyes grow ever darker, little pools of hurt, and he grits his teeth so hard Lafayette can practically hear the bone crying out. “Fine,” he spits.

“Fine,” Lafayette sneers back. The keys finally slip into the lock; he turns it sharply and stands up. He can’t find it in himself to be sorry. When he clenches his fist, the key’s metal grooves cut into his palm. “I’ll see you around, Alexander. Hopefully you’ll learn how to keep your mouth shut this time.”

And without a second look, he stalks off into the darkness. He ignores the growing dread clawing at his stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story is behind sorry friends i started a new job ((which i hate and will quit sooner or later)) but here's the new chapter!! constructive criticism welcome and leave kudos and comments please, they help me write!!
> 
> p.s. i changed the ending of the last chapter, nothing big but i thought the ending was a bit weird

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is @[bisexualexhamilton](http://bisexualexhamilton.tumblr.com). Come say hi.


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